Set the Fire to the Third Bar
by kismet-wayfinder
Summary: <html><head></head>Chapter fic. BenxGwen, BxG, Bwen. In an alternate timeline where, along with the removal of the Omnitrix, comes a storm, two cousins are swept away to a deserted place in the midst of ocean water. Left to their own devices, what blooms betwixt them?</html>
1. Chapter 1: Storm

**I own nothing but my fics. This will be a chapter fic. This is set in an alternate sort of timeline, starting off from the point between the original series and AF when the Omnitrix finally comes off of Ben's wrist. This is a reimagining, if you will. Consider it AU, sort of. This is what could've happened. In my imagination. Happy reading!  
><strong>

* * *

><p>The wind was blowing something fierce that day. As Gwen looked up bleakly at the sky, she blinked several times against the chill that came along with these winds. She had a feeling arise within her chest, also. It wasn't a good feeling. Perhaps the wind blowing up over the ocean they were standing by was an omen of sorts?<p>

"Ben," she said, shaking her head somewhat as her shoulder blade-length hair blew in the breezes. "I don't know if we should keep doing this. Grandpa told us on the phone that we might as well just wait for him to come back to town before we try to remove the Omnitrix."

"He said 'we might as well' - he didn't say we had to. School starts again soon - high school, Gwen. I don't really want to waltz in there with this watch still on my wrist. Something tells me that wouldn't be a good idea."

Sighing, the redheaded, fourteen year old Gwen licked at her lips nervously, before closing her eyes and moving her hands toward her cousin's wrist, her fingers wriggling as she did so. "_Alto - Sarvo - Relinquisho!_" she murmured, before opening her eyes to peek as strange, purple-colored sparks arced from her slender fingertips.

Also watching the device on his wrist closely, Ben - also fourteen - stared, unblinkingly, at it. He and his cousin both watched with great anticipation as the Omnitrix twitched and shook, tremoring. Was it finally going to come loose, freeling itself from Ben's wrist?

"Apparently not," Ben murmured, rolling his eyes as the watch stopped twitching at all. "Wanna give it another try?"

"I dunno, this is kind of tiring," Gwen replied, though determination was in her eyes. "But I guess I can give it one more go. Eighteenth time's the charm?"

And soon the cousins soon found themselves looking down at the Omnitrix once again. It was trembling and shaking on Ben's wrist as Gwen applied her spell once more, the purple waves and arcs of power emanating from her fingertips, glowing. "Maybe it'll work this time," she said, eyes and tone of voice eager.

Glancing away in the next moment, Gwen then took notice to the winds about them, as they began to pick up again, whirling and spinning higher and further and more fiercely than they had been doing just seconds earlier.

"What's going on?" she asked, her eyes blinking rapidly once more against the harsher breezes. "I didn't think my spell would cause the weather to go haywire like this."

"Maybe it has nothing to do with the spell - the weather, that is," Ben offered. "But either way, I wouldn't let up. I think this one will do the trick, and take the Omnitrix right off."

And so Gwen continued on working her spell, despite any possible alternative side-effects. "Gah!" Ben would cry out every so often, lifting his arm upward slightly as he did so; as the watch was pulled away, it also pulled on his skin, burning and tearing at him.

"I'm sorry it hurts, Ben," Gwen said to him. "I'm really sorry it hurts. Do you want me to stop?"

"No, we're almost there," Ben said with a grunt, the watch still detaching itself with some force. "If I have to, I can jump into the water here, to cool off the burn on my wrist afterward."

"Oh wow, it's actually _burning_ you?" Gwen exclaimed, before adding as an afterthought, "I'm sorrier still, but, jumping into the ocean in the middle of an upcoming storm seems like a terrible idea either way."

"Oh, you worry too much," Ben said to her, before gasping painfully for breath as the watch further unwelded itself from his skin, bit by bit. "We've almost got it."

Making a fast, harsh pulling motion with her hands, Gwen soon pulled the Omnitrix away via her purple-waved telenkenesis; it was soon fully off of her cousin's wrist, landing instead on the dock beneath their shoes.

"Thank you! Finally!" Ben called out, his eyes darting to stare at the raw, near-bloody ring left around his wrist in wake of the Omnitrix's absence.

"Yes, we did it!" Gwen cried out happily, before jumping as a clap of thunder echoed loudly throughout the skies above her. In her moment of fright, she stumbled a pace or two backwards, slipping and falling, hitting her head on the edge of the dock. The winds were whirling as fiercely as ever in the skies above.

"Gwen!" Ben exclaimed, watching as her now unconscious form fell directly down into the ocean water below; not knowing what else to do, he jumped in after her, grabbing onto her as the currents stirred by the ever-so-violent winds picked up speed.

"Gwen, wake up, come on!" he shouted, trying to keep his head above water and hers too; it wasn't a simple feat, and the way the water kept pulling them both away from the dock certainly wasn't helping either - the water was both too deep where they were, and too willfull and strong. "Gwen, you gotta wake up now! Come on and help me so we can get back to the - the dock!" She simply was not responding.

His eyes widening in fear, Ben watched as a large wave of water crashed over their heads. He coughed out the water as he struggled back to the surface. He then realized that Gwen could not cough, as she had no idea what was going on. Though it caused him to sink slightly beneath the water, he put all his energy into lifting her up as much as he could, holding her from behind, picking her up under her armpits. Soon though, they were both under the water again. It was simply no use.

"Sure, _now_ that the Omnitrix is off…" Ben thought aloud bitterly, realizing that he and his cousin were being pulled further and further away from the dock, regardless of how he strugged to pull them toward it; he also realized that the weather simply refused to let up, indefinitely worsening as the frightening seconds turned to minutes, passing him by.

"Ben?"

Turning Gwen's body about in his arms there in the water, Ben smiled slightly at hearing the sound of his cousin's voice at last, watching her as she slowly opened her eyes. "Ben, what happened?" Maybe now they stood a chance of swimming back to the dock, with her awake.

"You fell into the water after hitting your head," he explained to her quickly, before tightening his hold about her as a wave crashed over them both again.

"Wow, this storm is really crazy, isn't it?" she replied as she spat out water, as soon as they were both above its surface again; glancing away from her cousin, the redhead then noticed an impossibly large wave, certainly too large to be caused in the ocean by any normal phenomenon that she could think of in Bellwood. "Look out!"

The two Tennysons felt the power and the crash of the wave, and then they knew the darkness of being under the water - the coldness - the powerlessness. Opening his eyes under the water - a talent Ben had always seemed to have - the young man quickly found Gwen. His arms outreaching again, he clung onto her, before bringing his face to hers. They needed to breathe, and there was no getting to the surface again any time soon. He simply knew this somehow, deep down in his gut. The water was weighing down on him something fierce, something crazy. They were in trouble, so he had to do something.

Bringing his lips to hers, Ben and Gwen were able to help each other breathe then, deep down so far into the storm-riddled ocean water. Where the waves were taking them, they certainly had no clue or control over - but they had each other. They were breathing anyway - it was the very least they could do at all.


	2. Chapter 2: Stranded

**Chapter 2**

When consciousness came to them again, several hours had since passed by, though neither were aware of it - at least not at first. Ben was the first to come to, gasping slightly as he slid down from the log he'd grabbed onto (a memory of his, though vague at best) as soon as he and his cousin had managed to rise up and break the surface of the rampaging waters. Pulling Gwen up onto the log, as well, they'd drifted along for quite some time before their tired minds and bodies caught up with them, respectively, and sent them off into a dreamless sleep.

"Gwen…" Ben then whispered, before coughing, his voice hoarse as he cried out more loudly, "Gwen! Are you here?" He was hoping against all hope that she hadn't slipped from the log at some point in her sleep. It was, after all, amazing that the same hadn't happened to Ben himself.

"I'm here, I'm here," she called back, poking her head up beside him, startling him. "I woke up a few minutes ago and decided to dip into the water. Sorry."

"Well, you could've woke _me_ up," Ben replied sourly, before turning his head to the side as his cousin splashed water onto his face. "_Hey_!"

"Hey nothing," Gwen answered him, a vague sort of half-smile, half-smirk on her face. "We survived a storm at sea. Sure we're now…" - she then paused to look all around herself - "…in the middle of absolutely nowhere, but still, we lived through that, whatever that was."

"True, we did," Ben relented, before splashing her back in the face.

* * *

><p>It wasn't for several more hours of floating along, being driven and pulled by tides and currents, that the pair of Tennysons managed to come ashore the island. They were - at first - so thrilled at the prospect of finding the island at all that the rational emotions that <em>should<em> have twisted at their nerves (such as feeling lost, hopeless, done for, cast-awayed) were simply nonexistent. Clambering on out of the water, minding to not scrape up their hands against the seashells of the shore as the made their way, pushing up onto hand and feet to stand, Ben and Gwen soon found themselves dropped down again in exhaustion, though now upon wet plots of sand. They had found the beach of some island, so it seemed.

"I'm so glad we're out of that water," Gwen mumbled, her face turning to the side, her ear pressing into the damp sand as she faced Ben while she lay on her stomach.

"Ditto," he said to her, stretched out on his back as he stared upward at the strangely twilit sky, not knowing whether it was early morning or early evening.

Together, they soon passed out, exhaustion ultimately taking over even the emotion of being thrilled to find some sort of safety.

* * *

><p>The sound of seagulls awoke one of them another stretch of hours later. Judging from the way the sun was rising in the sky, it was fairly early on in the morning, though not too early, Ben thought. Sitting up slowly, he made to brush what sand he could from his arms and legs, before looking over to Gwen. She was still sleeping peacefully as she could, so why wake her?<p>

Moving to stand, Ben gave a stretch, and then slipped out of his soaking wet sneakers. Shaking his hair to rid it, also, of sand, the fourteen year old then stripped himself of his shirt and jeans, leaving himself only in wet boxers. Noticing a coconut lying randomly on the sands of the beach, he gave a chuckle. Some joke or other about an island phone floated to mind. A phone. Huh… a _phone_!

Rushing over to Gwen and dropping to his knees beside her sleeping figure, Ben was soon reaching his hand into her back jean pocket, trying to fish out her cell phone.

"_Hey_!" Gwen cried out, waking up unexpectedly, precisely as her cousin had his hand planted against her backside, down in her pocket. "Get off me!"

Shoving him with one hand, before rolling over to a sitting position, the messy-haired girl glared over at Ben, shaking her head somewhat. "What gives?"

"I was going for this," he said matter-of-factly, raising the cell phone he'd managed to locate just shy of being shoved away. "Sorry if you thought otherwise."

Blinking, Gwen then simply rolled her eyes, sighing. "Whatever, it's all good. So you wanted my phone? Why? Isn't it beyond waterlogged?"

"Well we won't know that for sure, necessarily," Ben replied defensively, before flipping open the phone and watching as a stream of water came pouring out from its speakerphone. "_Or_ it _is_ that waterlogged. Okay then. On to plan B."

"And what is plan B?" Gwen asked.

"Finding some coconuts to crack open, because I don't know about you, but I'm starving."


	3. Chapter 3: Limerence

**Chapter 3**

Six months had gone by since the pair of cousins were washed ashore the little island. Six long months, in which they learned how to do without many things. There was no television, no books, no clean clothes, no proper bathroom, no proper shower or bathtub, no electricity to speak of, no house, and nobody else in the world, except for each other.

For certain things, they had amended this, fixing makeshift accomadations. There was a hut made of tree branches now, which were bound with the strap-like bark from the coconut trees. It was fairly small, but sufficient on the days when it ventured to rain, or when the wind ventured to blow too harshly.

They had managed to create a fire from an old stick-rubbing Kid Scout trick Ben happened to know, and they self-taught themselves how to heat the ground with the fire, then bake a fish or two within it - a makeshift oven. It was quite the trial and error experience for them, but it worked out alright over the past few months, finally. For while they were grateful to have an abundant supply of bananas, mangos and coconuts, the fish was a welcome change for their taste buds.

The fish were caught with spears made from branches, branches shaped and whittled down by Ben with the use of his pocket knife (something Gwen never thought would come in handy, and boy, had he rubbed this in her face when it proved to be handy after all) while Gwen, for the most part, took care of the cooking. She also washed their clothes in the ocean water when needed, though they rarely really wore them.

For the most part, you could find the pair of them sitting near the water - or else, in their hut - Ben clad in only his boxer shorts, Gwen wearing her panties and a sports bra. The weather was usually quite hot, what with the sun beating down on them all the time. Even with the occasional balmy breeze, it was much too stifling to go about in normal day clothes anyway. Besides, Gwen would tell herself, she quite enjoyed the tan she had acquired.

Not that Ben would say a word about it, but he quite liked his own tan, along with hers. And when he would think such a thing as this, he would turn inexplicably red in the face, so that you might think he was temporarily sunburned. Luckily for him, Gwen never seemed to be around much when these instances occurred, and for that he was grateful. The weird thoughts he'd been getting about her ever since that life-or-death kiss in the water were bad enough, without her picking up on them.

The kiss, speaking of it, had not been mentioned by either to the other - not even once - since they'd arrived. Sometimes it seemed to be on one or the other's mind, but if it was, they wouldn't outright say so. If Gwen's tan made a blush come to Ben's face, then thinking about Ben's lips on her own did the same trick for Gwen.

Of course, being as silent about her more recent thoughts as her cousin ever was, she kept everything to herself. Every single thought. Sure, the pair of them found things to speak of and talk about, and to discuss. They'd have gone mad by now otherwise. They just never dared to really talk about each other, not _to_ each other, anyway - only in their alone time, thinking to themselves did they really dare to go there.

Gwen found herself in such a reverie on this day, six months and four days after she found herself beached upon this island with Ben. Her knees brought up to her chest as she leant back against a balmy palm tree, she bit down on her lower lip, thoughts playing out like a choose-your-own-adventure-book in her mind.

"_Well, if I just went and kissed him, I wouldn't have an excuse,"_ she thought inwardly. _"Like, he had an excuse. He was saving both our lives, letting us breathe and whatnot. If I just decide to kiss him, there's nothing life or death about it. That idiot, always getting things to go _his_ way, and never me mine."_ She would then opt into thinking about what if she really _did_ just up and kiss him later on that evening. _"Well, he'll probably push me off of him and tell me that I'm a lunatic, and he wouldn't even be wrong. I _am_ a lunatic. Who wants to go kissing Ben? Nevermind that he's my cousin, but he's _Ben_. Who would do that? Why do I _wanna_ do that? What is wrong with me?"_

And while the redhead would sit there and think all these things to herself, as she was doing this day, her aforementioned cousin would sit nearby, beneath a slightly further away palm tree, watching her from a distance. He could see her fretting and fussing about, though silently, and it puzzled him. What was she so upset and confused and stressed out over? Sure, they were castaways on an island, but they had food, shelter, water, each other's company. Was it really so bad? At least they didn't have to do math homework.

"_You probably ticked her off,"_ said a little voice inside Ben's head then; shaking his head, he murmured aloud to himself, "And how did I manage to do _that_ again?" _"No idea, but do you need to be given a reason? You always manage to do it _somehow_,"_ replied the inward voice, and Ben sighed, because he knew it was true.

Glancing back over her shoulder from the shade of her own palm tree, Gwen spied on her cousin as he murmured to himself, before sighing. What exactly was going on with him? Was having all the food he could want at any time really so bad? Or was it the nice, perfect beach weather twenty-four-seven? Or was it just him being tired of her company?

"_Well, he can just get over it if he's sick of me. It's not like I'm not sick of him, too."_

And back beneath his own palm tree, the fourteen and a half year old Ben reasoned with himself inwardly, _"Maybe she's just sick of me. I guess I can't blame her, but what can a guy do? She's always irritated or acting weird lately. It's not like I'm not sick of her, either."_


	4. Chapter 4: Anniversary

**A/N: To the reviewer who said this reminded them of The Blue Lagoon, I have to admit that that story was a big inspiration for this in the first place. Thanks to all who reviewed/will review/read/continue to read on. :D  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

"Well, I guess it's been about seven months now."

Watching as her cousin dropped a rather large stone down into a half-broken, glass jug that he'd come across shortly after they'd come upon the island in the first place, Gwen tilted her head to the side, feeling mildly confused. "Seven months now since we got here?" she ventured to ask. "Probably. How do you figure, though?"

"Well, I've been keeping little stones in little piles up here, to count for the days. When thirty days go by, I put a larger stone in the jug there. Today I placed in the seventh one."

"You do realize that some months have more or less than thirty days, right?" Gwen asked him.

"Oh, shut up. At least I've bothered to keep up with it at all," Ben answered her.

And to be fair, he did have a point. Gwen hadn't bothered the first time to try and really tally up the months that they'd been castaways there on the island. Sure, she'd kept a mental count for about the first forty days or so, but those were also the days when she felt sure that someone - anyone - would also be by at any time to rescue them. Alas, the tides, and the times, had long since changed. She felt quite sure that she was stuck here for the time being. Stuck here with her cousin, who was now chasing a crab along the sand.

"I'm gonna get you!" he howled at the poor thing, before leaping down on it.

"Benjamin Tennyson, you are fourteen and a half now, if your record keeping is to be trusted. Stop acting like a little kid," Gwen scolded him, her hands on her hips.

"I'll act like whatever I wanna act like," he replied, grabbing at his throat as his voice inexplicably dropped a few octaves, before rising back up again toward the end of his statement, cracking. "Oh jeez, not this again."

"Ha! Your voice is changing," Gwen teased, sticking her tongue out.

"Now who's not acting their age?" Ben retorted, his voice screeching again. "Gah, it looks like I won't be talking for a while."

"_What_ a relief," Gwen said with a smirk, before raising her eyebrows in her cousin's direction as the crab he'd been chasing earlier snapped at his foot, narrowling missing one of his toes.

Glaring down at the crustacean, Ben shook his head, before folding his arms across his chest haughtily and then turning to march away, both from the crab and from Gwen. He'd had enough of the both of them for now.

* * *

><p>As the sun set on the eve of the seventh month of stranded island life, Gwen sat up on a hilltop, running the clothes she'd just washed out in the water against a large, rough rock. Naked, save for a piece of flannel she'd fixed around her waist like a skirt, the ginger counted on her hair to hang down the length of her bosom and cover her whilst she did her work, and she also counted on Ben to not show up, especially seeing as how she'd irked him so much earlier that same day.<p>

Once she'd washed and scrubbed out the clothes, the lanky girl stood, hanging them over the various rocks about the area, knowing that the plateau would be the opportune place to leave them, for the breezes would reach them over night, air-drying them. The sun would finish up the job the following morning, and, in the mean time, Gwen would put on Ben's undershirt for cover, which he never took to wearing anyway, so she just as well wear it herself.

She had just pulled it over her head when she heard a sound behind her, one that made her jump. "I've come to get you!" Ben cried out, clad only in the underwear Gwen had left him to keep on; a crab - presumably the one from earlier - was held outward in his hands, pincers pinching as the young man ran forth, aiming the creature at his cousin.

"You get away from me with that!" Gwen shrieked, taking off at a run.

Undeterred, Ben continued to chase her, even on down the hillside. "I'm gonna get you - I am! Keep making fun of my voice cracking - see what happens!"

"Alright, alright, I'll stop making fun of it, Ben, or, should I say… Ben_ita?_!"

"Oh, that's _it_!"

Putting the crab down to the ground, Ben threw all he had into running down the hill, jumping over and dodging little rocks and obstacles along the way. Keeping just ahead of him by a foot or so, Gwen shrieked every so often, whenever she would look back and see that her cousin had gained on her.

"You can't keep away forever!" Ben called after her, jumping forward as he threw his arms out in front of himself; they came to wrap around her middle, pulling her down to the ground as he himself fell atop her from behind.

"Get off me, Ben!" Gwen cried out, wriggling and turning over onto her back there on the sand.

In the distance, the moon was rising higher and higher up in the night sky, over the water. With the moon beams gleaming down upon the waves, it was a beautiful sight. Nearer to the sands, upon the island, Ben himself was gazing down at a beautiful sight. Lying beneath him, barely clad, Gwendolyn's hair fell and fanned out behind her head. Her tanned skin glistened almost as much as the waves beneath the moon, and her eyes, green as emeralds, shined brightly as she laughed up at him. "Let me _go_…" She'd fallen and rolled over into a bed of strongly perfumed flowers. Brushing against the sides of her hair and face, they made the perfect crown for her head, even as she lay there lazily, suddenly finding herself being tickled by sandy fingers.

"I won't let you go until you swear me something," Ben said to Gwen, his hands slipping and sliding all over her ribs and stomach, his fingers moving swiftly to tickle all of her funny spots.

"Swear to you what, Ben?" Gwen breathed out amidst her giggles, tossing her head to and fro as her own hands moved to his chest, before slipping beneath his underarms, going for _his_ known ticklish spots.

"Hey, no fair!" Ben said to her, letting up on his tickling to instead grab her wrists, pinning them down to the sand, his knees remaining on either side of her body; she was quite trapped.

"Talk about no fair!" Gwen cried back to him, struggling, but unable to move even an inch. "Go on, tell me what I need to swear to so I can swear to it and then get up."

"Well now hold on, I need to think of something for you to swear to first," Ben replied.

"Oh, are you kidding me?" his cousin asked him, still struggling against his grasp. "You're holding me hostage for nothing?"

Gazing back down at Gwen, Ben shook his head, saying, "Don't make me tickle you again. Next time I'll be merciless. I won't stop until you feel like you can't even breathe. And _then_… Gwen, don't move now."

The sudden change in her cousin's tone of voice was startling; Gwen felt a bit frightened. "What?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"That crab," Ben said quietly, his eyes staring just above and off to the left of her forehead. "From earlier… it sort of has some of your hair in its pinchy-things… Don't move too fast."

"What do you mean, don't move too fast?" Gwen exclaimed in a panicky voice, quickly rolling out from under Ben (whose grasp had since relaxed) and away from both him and the crustacean; it proved to be a bad idea.

"Oh, now why'd you go and do _that_ for?" Ben asked her, watching by the light of the moon as the crab scuttled away, a long lock of Gwen's hair held in one of its claws.

"Oh my _God_!" Gwen screamed, reaching for her hair; she could, indeed, feel where a small lock of it was gone; still screaming, she scrambled to her feet while Ben did the same. "I can't _believe_ you!"

"Well, it's not _my_ fault!" Ben shouted back at her. "I told you not to move!"

"Oh, if you hadn't been messing with that stupid _crab_-" Gwen shouted, stepping forward and smacking Ben on the front of his shoulder. "-then none of this wouldn't have _happened_-" Shoving him now, she used her other hand to smack at his chest. "-why do you have to be so _stupid_?"

"Ow, ow, _hey_ now!" Ben cried out, once at each smack, before he finally reached forward and grabbed at her wrists, pulling them in towards himself. "It's just hair. It'll grow back."

"Yeah, in another _seven months_ maybe!" Gwen shouted at him, her face less than an inch away from his. "Then it'll grow back, won't it? If I'm lucky, maybe!"

"Oh, come _on_, Gwen! It's not like you don't look pretty without it or something!"

"What?" the redhead replied sharply, blinking. "Did you just call me pretty?"

"No, no I didn't," Ben lied; his hands were still tightly clung onto his cousin's wrists.

"Yes, yes you _did_," Gwen whispered back, her chest heaving as she panted to catch her breath after her last screaming fest.

"So what if I did?" Ben said to her, letting go of her wrists at last. "So what if I called you-"

The rest of his thought caught off and kept from being spoken, the brunette young man suddenly found his lips caught up in a kiss along with Gwen's. His eyes wide open, he gradually began to return the kiss, however random and unexpected it was. Within another flash, Gwen had pulled away, and was running away from Ben, heading back toward their hut by the looks of it. Feeling too stunned to go after her, or even to say anything, Ben simply remained rooted to the spot. It was seven months to the day that evening that they'd gone off into the water - give or take - and they'd finally, just now, shared a second kiss.

Funny how they still hadn't spoken of it, though.


	5. Chapter 5: Scare

**Chapter 5**

The sun had barely risen that following morning. At least, that sight of the partial sun was what Gwen's eyes spyed upon as she hid, crouched behind the reeds of the lagoon.

The lagoon had been a discovery of hers quite early on after reaching the island. Of course, Ben had seen and noticed it, too, but he hadn't noticed it quite to the extent that his cousin had, for she had a more ethereal quality about her which he simply did not possess himself. To Ben, the lagoon was what it was - a lagoon; it was full of very pretty, very deep blue water, and it was fun to wade into and jump into and splash about in at times. However, to Gwen, the lagoon may very well have been an ancient home to a waterborne goddess, one who reigned with all authority over the entire island. It was possibly a very sacred, very holy place. Who was she but a mere straggler by on this goddess's property? It was certainly more than a swimming pool to her, at any rate.

Still, she was not above accepting the uses of the lagoon for her own good, if need be. In fact, mere days after she and Ben had found themselves beached there upon the island, she'd buried something quite important beneath the more shallow part of the water at low tide. It was a secret to be kept betwixt herself and the imaginary lagoon goddess, for she feared that a beauty she'd yet to fully discover would come to an end before it even had a chance to be born in the first place if Ben knew just what she had buried there.

Now it was at this lagoon that Gwen was currently stationed, peeking betwixt the tall reeds as she attempted to get a glance at wherever her cousin might be. It had been a whole night since she'd both smacked and kissed him, and she wasn't quite sure what to make of the situation that she'd brought upon them both. As with her early reveries, she'd noted often how Ben had indeed had a reason to kiss her in the first place. He was saving their lives, so long ago. What about her though? She simply had no excuses, and it was this loss of words that kept her tongue-tied and hidden behind the reeds.

Ben was lying flat on his back, the sun - now much higher in the sky - beaming down and reddening the cheeks of his face. After quite a few hours of tossing and turning and writhing in confusion the night before, he'd managed to pass out at long last. His trouble sleeping was due to the fact that Gwen had kissed him. _Gwen had kissed him_ and he still wasn't certain whether or not it was a dream, a hallucination, or the result of both, brought on by a poorly cooked fish dinner. Either way, he was sleeping quite soundly now that it was morning, snoring even, and it was this sight that Gwen now kept her eyes on, even as she continued to keep her post just on the other side of the reeds.

It was after a few minutes more of keeping her vigil that something different caught the redhead's eye. At first she wasn't clear on what it was, but once it began to make a strange sort of hissing sound, she thought she quite knew for sure what it was. Slinking up more closely to her sleeping cousin, her eyes widened in fear as she watched the creature coil up, its head rising back, jaws opening widely. It was a snake, and it was about to strike her cousin.

"Ben! Look out!" Rushing ahead and throwing herself atop Ben, Gwen cried out as she felt the snake sink its fangs into her hip, which was showing between her flannel skirt and Ben's borrowed undershirt.

"What happened? What is it?" Ben exclaimed, jerking awake to find his cousin's body draped over him; he then noticed the snake.

Reaching over for a nearby rock, he took to bashing and smashing the snake's head over and over again, until he felt quite sure the thing was dead. It was only once he was sure of this that he put his hands at Gwen's sides, rolling her over as he sat up straighter. Her head in his lap, her eyes staring up at him, wide and fearful, she said to him, "It bit me on my hip. Ben, help me, please…"

Ben, being certainly no expert on these sorts of situations, still managed to conjure up a tiny piece of information that he had either heard on a television documentary, or else read in a scouting magazine from some time in the distant past. _Suck the venom out, then spit it out_, he thought to himself, before gently moving to lay Gwen's body down to the ground, away and off his own.

"What are you doing?" she asked him, breathing shallowly as Ben situtated his body so that his head was near to her hip, his mouth opening.

Not answering her, Ben wasted no time in placing his lips over the snake bite, sucking as hard as he could to gather all venom that he could manage to from it, before turning his face to the side and spitting it out to the ground. Over and over he did this, until he was nearly out of breath from the effort of it. Glancing over to Gwen's face, he saw that she had turned a pale shade, and he crawled over to her, placing his forehead against hers. "Come on, now, don't give up on me. I think I got all of the poison out."

"I hope so. Thank you, Ben," she said to him, closing her eyes.

"Thank _you_…" he whispered back, before placing a hand over the snake bite. "You'll be okay soon. I promise."

"Ben, there's something you should know. In the lagoon over there, there's-"

"Shhh, just rest. Just rest, Gwen," he said, interrupting her as he placed his other hand against her cheek, his thumb resting at the corner of her lips; she still looked too pale for his liking, but all he could he do now was to hope that he managed to remove most all of the venom in time. And only time would tell.


	6. Chapter 6: Visitors

**Chapter 6**

Gwen had been unconscious for many an hour now. Lying within the hut with a pile of clothes beneath her head as a pillow, the sweat-drenched girl writhed and frowned in her deep state of sleep. Ben, who had finally dared to leave her her side, was away at the other side of the island, gathering up fruit. She'd had a fever that finally broke not too long ago, and it was then that he felt safe to leave her be in the hut, to continue getting over the snake bite. What he wasn't aware of, as he ventured further onto the other side of the island, was that Gwen wasn't entirely safe. While her body was healing, her mind was enthralled and caught up in a nightmare that had her heart trembling within her chest.

In her dream, she was still approaching Ben and the snake. Its jaws were strangely unhinged, even more powerful looking than it had been in reality (though of course, this dream felt like reality to her at the moment). Venom dripped slowly from its fangs, and as it rose upward higher and higher, she found herself too paralyzed to do anything. Screaming a scream that didn't even manage to leave her throat somehow, she watched in her mind as the snake latched onto Ben's throat, waking him in a most terrifying way. Latched on, it wouldn't let up, sinking its fangs in as far as they'd go, even as he let out a blood-curdling scream.

"_Ben_! No!" Sitting bolt upright as she screamed sincerely this time, awakening into reality for the first time in what had felt like a small eternity, Gwen looked quickly around the hut she found herself in; where was Ben?

Scrambling to get to her feet, she nearly fell down as soon as she'd managed to get up in the first place; her knees were trembling, shaking something fierce. She was still quite weak after what she'd endured. But that didn't matter to her. Even as her mind came to realize that she'd only witnessed a mere dream, Gwen still felt hellbent on finding Ben. Something dark and heavy remained over her heart as she flashed back to thoughts from the dream: his scream, his body lying hopeless as she did nothing, him dying. She wasn't even aware of the fact that she had begun to cry as she slipped out from the hut now, managing to barely keep standing as she stumbled forward.

"Ben?" she called out, clutching at her chest as her eyes darted all around. "Ben, where are you?"

* * *

><p>Far away, on the other side of the island, Ben was turning to head back for the hut now. He had placed a good amount of fruit on a shirt and tied it up into a makeshift bag, which he then affixed to a stick. With this over his shoulder, he now headed back, traveling in the same way he'd come to get there in the first place. However, before he could quite make it about three-forths of the way back, strange new sounds caught his attention. It was the sound of other voices, male voices. There were other people on the island with them!<p>

Running in the direction of the voices, Ben wasn't even sure what was driving him to do so, but he felt certainly curious about who it was that was with them now. Was it a search party that'd come for them, finally finding them after nearly a year? Surely, whoever it was, they hadn't been there with them long, because Ben felt no doubt that they'd have run into each other before now. Running for moments longer, Ben slowed his pace a bit as he came to the place where the trees began to clear. He could just make out a small band of people, a mix of five or six old and young men. They were standing round and about the lagoon, talking amongst each other. Ben remained hidden behind the shelter of the trees at the edge of the place, listening in to them all.

"Are you quite certain, Shelby?" the oldest of the men there said, his moustache bristling as he eyed a younger member of the group with a nasty look.

"Yes, sir. Our sattelite records indicated that it was somewhere around here, but…"

"If I may, I suggest, sir, that we go back to headquarters and regroup our efforts," said a third man, a bit of a snide, proud look on his face as he tilted his nose upwards in the direction of the man called Shelby.

"Yes, quite right, Jacobson," the moustached-man replied, before clearing his throat and adding, "Well that's that, then. We'll head back to the other side of this island and fetch our copter. Back to headquarters we go."

"Sir, we've only been out searching for such a short while!" interjected the young Shelby then, not moving to walk away from the lagoon as the others did. "Is this really what the integrity of the Forever Knights has come to?"

Mere feet away from the lagoon, Gwen poked her head out around the side of the hut. She had paused on her search for Ben and ducked back within the shelter of it when she'd heard strange voices and footsteps approaching the area. It was only now that she dared to try and catch a glimpse of whoever they were that had come there, now that they mentioned the Forever Knights. Whoever this Shelby was, he was right in going to the lagoon, if Gwen's gut feeling was right about what the group was in search of in the first place. She felt frightened and uncertain about what would happen next, and she dearly wished more than ever that her cousin was there with her to comfort her.

Standing amongst the trees still, Ben kept his eyes peeled as he watched the group of men stand and stare back at the one called Shelby. He'd heard them mention the Forever Knights, and this had intrigued him greatly.

"Shelby, our integrity is, evidently, already compromised when we leave it to you younger ones to figure out our plans, only to lead us into the middle of nowhere, where we're forced to leave afterward, fruitlessly," said the older man, and as Ben's eyes darted over to look at him, he then noticed the sight of a head poking round the side of the hut; Gwen must be awake, he realized, though he couldn't very well walk over to her now. He'd have to wait until this group cleared off.

And so, turning his attention back to the group of visitors, Ben watched as Shelby hung his head, solemnly taking to marching along after the rest of the small brigade as they made their way away from the lagoon, instead heading back for the other side of the island. Ben noticed that they took a different path than he ever had; he made a mental note to investigate it later.

Back by the hut, Gwen had crept fully out and around to the side of it now, watching her own self as the small group of men walked away from the lagoon. Inwardly, she sighed in relief. If they had come for what she thought they'd come for, they'd certainly left empty-handed. However, they could just as easily come back for it later, once they realized exactly where it was. But then, there was also the hope that maybe they wouldn't come back, either. She had a bad feeling about being caught all alone with the Forever Knights, and she'd really rather it never happen again. They were never great news in the past, so she was sure they wouldn't be great news now.

Back in the shelter of the trees, Ben waited a good long while, until the voices of the men were distant, and then unheard altogether, before he ran from the trees, making a bulletline for the hut. Blinking as she noticed the figure of her cousin running toward her, Gwen pushed herself to her feet, a smile breaking out across her face as he reached her, throwing his arms around her as they met. His stick-and-sachel of fruit lay forgotten amongst the trees.

"I was looking for you before those men came by the lagoon!" Gwen exclaimed to him, hanging her arms around Ben's neck as he kept his own arms wrapped around her. "Then I hid, because I wasn't sure who they were. But, oh, I had such a horrible dream about you earlier, and I'm so happy to see that you're okay now. Because, because in the dream, the snake bit you, and you died, and…"

Moving his hands away from Gwen's body, bringing them to rest at the sides of her face instead, Ben looked her right in the eyes, a serious look in his own. "I didn't die. The snake didn't get me. You saved me from it, and I'm right here, and you're right here, and we're both perfectly safe and sound. You hear me?"

Her chest rising and falling rapidly as she fought back the strange urge to begin to cry again, Gwen threw herself at Ben, crashing her lips to his. Letting his hands fall from her face, to wrap them around her waist instead, Ben returned the kiss, his heart pounding against his ribcage something fierce as their lips opened and closed against each other, breathing new life into each other, finding new feelings they hadn't dared to seek out before; they felt scary and wonderful at the same time.

When the pair finally broke apart moments later, they found themselves breathless, pulses racing, minds spinning. Their arms were still wrapped around each other, and neither one of them had the particular intent of letting go anytime soon.

"Is this wrong?" Gwen finally asked aloud, barely able to hear her own voice over the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears.

"Maybe, but I don't really care. If it is, then I like being wrong," came Ben's answer, before he brought his lips to hers again, kissing her, though this time a bit more chastely. "Now come on, I forgot something by the trees. I went and gathered some fruit for you, in case you were awake and hungry when I got back."

"Thanks. I guess I am kind of hungry," Gwen answered him, before walking with him, hand in hand, back toward the trees. "And again, I'm so glad you're okay, Ben."

"I'll always be okay as long as you're okay, Gwen."


	7. Chapter 7: Misunderstanding

**Chapter 7**

Gwen sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, her back resting against a palm tree. The sun was barely rising out over the water, but she and Ben had been awake for over an hour. They'd been startled from their slumber by what sounded like helicopter blades. Frightended and confused, they'd made a mad dash from the hut, hiding amongst the trees until they could tell that the sound they'd heard was fading, going further away, rather than incoming. Only then did they return to their usual dwelling spot near the beach, tired-eyed, but wide-awake.

"Eight months now, give or take," Ben said, glancing over to his cousin as he dropped a large stone into the half-broken jar that had recently only contained seven of them. "And I guess the Forever Knights have been here twice in the past one month, at least. What are they coming _here_ for? It's not like I have the Omnitrix on me or anything."

Staying silent and turning her head to the side, glancing away from Ben, Gwen bit down on her bottom lip, before tightening her arms around her bent knees. Resting her head atop them, she let out a sigh, before saying, "I guess it's only a matter of time before _someone_ finds us out here anyway."

"Yeah, well, it's not like that'd be the worst thing, though I hope it's someone other than the Forever Knights that decides to find us."

Hesitating upon hearing his words, Gwen swallowed back a strange, surprise of a lump in her throat, before lifting her head and looking over to glare at Ben. Noticing her expression, the shaggy-haired teen blinked, before taking a few steps towards her, leaving the jar forgotten for now.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked her, frowning as she continued to glare at him, looking as hurt as if he'd just said something insulting to her.

"Nothing," she said quickly, sharply, before shaking her head and getting to her feet. "I'm just still tired, I guess;" It was evident that she was about to cry, though Ben went along with her insistance that nothing was really that matter. "I, uhm, I'm going to head back to the hut now and try to go back to sleep."

"Oh, okay then," Ben answered, watching with a frown still as Gwen turned and walked away from him, her arms wrapping around herself as she went.

* * *

><p>"Oh, come on, you've been inside there all day long now!"<p>

Poking his head into the hut sometime later on in the evening, Ben shook his head in the direction of his cousin, who sat at the far right side of the shelter, one knee bent upward, the other relaxed as she herself leant back against the side of the wall. "Are you ever planning to come out today?" he asked her.

"Why? Are you just _dying_ for someone to spot us out here, or something?" Gwen returned snidely, before also returning Ben's disdainful look with her familiar glare from that same morning. "Maybe we should build a signal fire. Maybe we should make a swim back for another shore! Maybe… oh, nothing. Forget I said anything, Benjamin."

Raising his eyebrows, the young man directly disobeyed her words, instead coming on into the hut with her. Walking up to her, he remained stood nearby where she sat, and he towered over her as he looked down, his arms folding over his chest. "What's going on? The least you can do is tell me how and why I made you so mad at me."

Blowing outward from puckered lips, Gwen shook her head as she turned to look upward at Ben. "Look, I'm _sorry_," she said, her breathing uneven as she felt the strange lump return to her throat again. "I guess I was just sort of surprised to hear how, well, just how _eager_ you were this morning to get us off this island."

"Huh?" Ben replied blankly, moving to sit down beside his cousin, confusion in his eyes as he placed a hand at the side of her face. "Don't you want to be rescued, too? Don't you want to go back to, well, being normal?" Unable to stand the tears that he now watched drop from his cousin's eyes, Ben leant his face inward, kissing them away, before placing a gentle kiss on her lips.

At first, Gwen returned the kiss, but she then broke it off, saying quietly to him, "If we go back to being normal… If we go back to our families and school life and everything, then we can't ever do this again. We can't ever be together, kissing, holding hands - none of that, can we?"

"Oh…" Ben said softly, withdrawing slightly from Gwen as he hung his head downward. "Well, not necessarily. We could just _tell_ our family that-"

"Tell them what? That we're together now? That, yeah, we're cousins and all - we're family - but we kiss all the time, and maybe that's not right, but we wanna stay together here in Bellwood, too? Is that what we tell them?"

"Look, I don't know what we'd tell them, but I just…"

"You just _what_, Ben?"

"I always just figured we would get off of this island _eventually_, you know? And I don't think that leaving it means we have to not be together, either. You're just assuming that to be true, Gwen. Come on, do you really think we'd just stop being together, just because our family -or whoever else- didn't like it?"

Looking back at Ben with serious contemplation in her eyes, Gwen finally answered him in a somber voice, "Maybe. Yeah, maybe they would stop us."

Scowling at Gwen, Ben shook his head, before standing up and saying, "Well, fine then. If you'd break up with me that easily, then, then I don't even know what."

"That's not what I was saying, Ben!" Gwen cried back, before picking up a nearby stone and tossing it at him; it struck his chest, though it didn't really hurt. "Why do you have to be so stupid about everything?"

"Yeah, you want to stay stuck on this island, but _I'm_ the stupid one."

"Oh, just go away from me! Leave me alone!"

"Why don't _you_ leave _me_ alone, Gwen? I mostly built this hut anyway."

Standing up at once, the redhead took another stone in her hand, before saying angrily, "Get out before I aim this next one at your teeth."

Making a growling sort of aggravated noise back at her, Ben did as was ordered nonetheless, and turned to stomp out of the hut, leaving his cousin to be alone. Marching over to the jar of larger stones, he picked it up, before tossing it against some nearby rocks. The shattering noise drew Gwen's attention, taking her from the hut, also.

"What was that sound?" she asked as she ducked her way out onto the sand.

"Why do you care what it was, Gwen?" Ben shouted back at her, still enraged by how impossible she could be at times.

"Because it sounded like something broke, that's why I care!"

"Something did break! I broke the stupid jar of stupid stones, because who cares how _stupidly_ long we're stupid out here for anymore?"

"Okay, fine, see if I come to check on you anymore when I hear something! Go off and get yourself hurt, Benjamin! See if I care!"

"Who needs to go off to get injured? All I have to do is stay around you long enough and you'll throw fricking rocks at me!"

"Well, _fine_!" Gwen shouted, red in the face as she turned and marched right back into the hut.

"Fine!" Ben shouted back, more loudly as his even redder face scowled in the direction of the shelter; how dare she be so infuriating?

Kicking at the sand and stones along the way as he made his way down toward the beach water, Ben didn't turn to look back at the hut. He felt that if he saw Gwen's face again at that moment, he might become so angry with her that he'd lose what mind he had left altogether. So he didn't see her immediately coming out of the hut, bringing a hand to her eyes as the sun took to setting, keeping a watch on him near the water's edge. Even if he did know that she really meant well, he damn sure didn't feel like acknowledging it at the moment.

Not knowing - nor caring if she did know - what Ben did or didn't want to acknowledge, Gwen soon found herself walking down toward the sunset beach her own self. Chewing at the corner of her lip as she walked, she paused a few feet shy of her cousin. She noted to herself that it was amazing how much chillier the island air could turn in a matter of moments, now that the sun was almost completely gone from the sky. After another moment or so of just standing there, feeling unsure of whether or not Ben knew or cared that she'd come down to speak with him, she said, "I'm sorry I hit you with a rock."

When nothing but silence met this, she rolled her eyes, but ventured to speak to him again. "So… what did you do all day anyway, while I stayed inside the hut?"

At first it seemed like Ben was going to ignore this, too, but he eventually turned slightly to his side, somewhat facing her. "Well, the other day I noticed the Forever Knights heading across the island on some different path that I myself hadn't traveled before. So I went and traveled it."

"Oh," Gwen replied. "Well, did you discover anything interesting, or...?"

"Well, if you can call it interesting, I did notice that they have markers on certain trees. They might have missed their mark the first couple times they came here, but I'm pretty sure they'll be back again, as many times as it takes to get to whatever they're trying to find."

Closing her eyes and hanging her head, Gwen took a blind step forward, before reopening them and looking up at her cousin. "I know what they're coming for."

"You do?" Ben asked her at once, arching an eyebrow.

"At least, I'm pretty sure I do."

"Well, what is it, Gwen?" he asked her again, placing his hands at her shoulders. "What are they after?"

Sighing, the redhead closed her eyes again. She was about to divulge her secret about what was buried beneath the shallow part of the lagoon, and though she couldn't be sure of what exactly, or how, she felt that it was going to change everything for the both of them.


	8. Chapter 8: Standstill

**A/N: Just wanted to take a sec to say thank you very much! to everyone who has reviewed/read my fic thus far.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 8<strong>

Reaching out and grasping Ben's hand with her own, Gwen tugged at him as she turned, leading him away from the sands of the beach, the both of them walking away, past the hut, and keeping onward until they reached the lagoon. The moon above giving them light, Ben gave his cousin's hand a squeeze as he felt her stop, pausing and hesitating as she looked down at the blue sparkling water below.

"This is the spot where I've kept it hidden for quite a long time now. It's here, buried beneath the shallow part of the lagoon," Gwen said, before releasing Ben's hand and moving to kneel down next to said shallow part. "You should know, I'm sorry for not telling you about it, sort of, but, in a way, I'm also not sorry. Both at the same time."

Growing a bit impatient and ancy, Ben, too, knelt down alongside the lagoon. Moving his hands beneath the dark water's surface, he began using his bare hands to dig away at the mushy mud below. "You don't have to be sorry. Or not sorry. Just, please, tell me what it is we're digging up exactly?"

"The Omnitrix," answered Gwen quietly, her eyes purposely avoiding Ben's as he now looked over to her, clearly stunned at this revelation.

"Don't you remember the upgrades that we were working on?" he replied frantically, looking back to the lagoon as he began to dig faster in the mud. "Remember how we'd _just_ gotten it to be able to send brief messages to Grandpa's Plumber badge? We could've sent something ages ago, Gwen! Why didn't you tell me about this? This probably _is_ what the Forever Knights are after. Oh, for more than one reason, you really could have told me about this."

Sighing, Gwen shook her head, before answering him. "I said I was sorry already. Besides, that message communicator upgrade wasn't really perfected or anything. It was just experimental."

"It's not like at least trying to send a message would kill us or anything, though. I seriously can't believe you right now," came Ben's reply, before he fell silent, digging away a bit more before finally reaching something. "Is this it?"

Straining to see in the dim moonlight, Gwen soon gave a nod of her head, watching as her cousin lifted the mud-covered Omnitrix up, from beneath the waters. "Yes, of course that's it."

"It's… blinking," Ben announced, before placing it back in the water, to rinse the mud off of it completely. "Why is it blinking?"

Pushing herself up to stand, Gwen crossed her arms over her bosom, before turning her head, to look back out over the horizon of the moonlit beach. "I didn't find it right away. The Omnitrix, that is. I was happening along one day, a few days after we got washed ashore here. There it was. You were on the other side of the island, trying to find different fruit. I was excited, at first. I _did_ try to send a message to Grandpa."

"You what?" Ben replied, standing up slowly, the Omnitrix held tightly in his grasp as he took a step forward, closer to Gwen. "You mean you did try to- but then why don't you want us to get off the island if- what did Grandpa _say_? What else are you keeping from me?"

"Don't shout at me!" Gwen exclaimed, reacting to the rise in Ben's tone of voice. "I'm sorry! I guess I wanted to at least let Grandpa know we were okay so he and our family wouldn't worry about us. But it didn't matter anyway. Grandpa didn't get the signal I sent out. As I said before, the technology for it is _experimental_."

When Ben said nothing, Gwen continued on. "So anyway, like I said, Grandpa didn't pick up on it. But someone else did. More than one person. And as I listened in, I realized that they were talking about finding the signal coming from the Omnitrix, and knowing where to find it now, and I knew they weren't familiar voices, and I knew that whoever was speaking, they couldn't be up to any good."

"So why didn't you _tell me_ about all this?" Ben said, staring back at his cousin in disbelief.

"Well, I meant to!" she answered defensively. "But all the talk of finding the signal scared me, since I didn't know who was saying it exactly. So, so I buried the Omnitrix, right here where you found it, meaning to tell you about it when you came back from the other side of the island, but I just never did."

"You just… never… did?" Ben repeated back slowly, looking and feeling dumbfounded. "Do you at least have any reasons for just never telling me something so important, Gwen?"

Not answering right away, the redhead instead turned and stepped into the lagoon. She had soon waded out a good way into it, the water coming up to her stomach as she stood there, looking back at Ben. "The water," she said to him. "It makes me remember how I felt, and how I felt is why I never told you. I mean, when you kissed me - albeit, to save our lives - something in me changed. And, I'm sure I'm really, really wrong for not telling you about the Watch. But whenever I would come over here, to this water… I don't know. Something about the lagoon made me feel that I didn't need to tell you. It made me feel like maybe we were supposed to be here. Maybe it had all happened for a reason."

"Gwen… I know you're afraid that we can't be together if we go back to Bellwood, but we can be. We will be. And who knows? Maybe you are halfway right. Maybe we did get washed up here, just so we can realize something we both already knew for a long time. But, that doesn't have to mean that we're meant to stay here, now that we've figured it out. Right?"

Closing her eyes, Gwen turned and waded out further into the water, until it was up to her neck. Breathing in and out deeply, she eventually answered with, "When I'm right here, like this, with you, I'll be honest; I feel like I'd almost be okay with never going back."

"Gwen…"

"Now, I'm not saying that we _won't_ ever go back. If we can find a way to, I'm sure we will, some time, some day. I just wonder if it isn't too soon, Ben."

Glancing down at the Omnitrix in his hand as it began to blink again, this time more rapidly, the shaggy haired young man was soon looking away, toward the direction of the trees as the sound of distant helicopter blades whirring could be heard.

"Gwen, I get the feeling that we might not have a say in the matter either way," he said. "The Forever Knights are coming back."


	9. Chapter 9: Paradox

**Chapter 9**

"Are you sure, Ben?" Gwen asked, a thrill of panic striking her as she remained stood in the water of the lagoon, her eyes staring back at her cousin. "Are you sure you hear the Forever Knights?"

"Can't you hear them, too?" he returned, looking back at her. "The helicopters are getting closer and closer. They might even land closer than usual this time, closer to the lagoon, anyway."

"What if they see the hut, Ben?" Gwen asked, worry in her tone of voice.

Shaking his head, he answered her, "I don't guess we have any time to do anything about it. We can't tear it down or anything - they'll be here any second. We should probably just hide, lie in wait."

"Bury the Omnitrix back where it was!" Gwen said suddenly. "Trust me. Just bury it and maybe it'll smother the signal enough that they'll just leave. It's worked all this time so far, hasn't it?"

"I'll try it, I guess," Ben said, dropping to his knees as he stuck the Omnitrix back into the muddy indentation beneath the shallow part of the lagoon.

"Hurry!" Gwen said to him, peering up at the yonder sky as she herself saw the helicopters gradually come into view. "It looks like they might be landing any minute now."

Pausing for a second, seemingly lost in thought, Ben suddenly shook his head, before lifting the Omnitrix up from the mud that he'd just placed it in. "No," he said. "I'm sure they'll be able to find it this time, and I'm not letting them take it."

"What are you planning to do then?" Gwen asked nervously, shaking her own head from side to side. "They'll be landing any second - I just told you that!"

"Well, the only thing I know for sure is that they won't be able to get the Omnitrix so easily if it's on my wrist."

"What?" Gwen exclaimed, her eyes widening. "Do you not remember how much trouble it took to get it off your arm in the first place?"

"Of course I do," Ben answered her, before quickly fastening the watch back to his wrist. "But desperate times call for desperate measures, or however the saying goes…"

Looking out over toward the beach, Gwen gasped as she watched the helicopter touch down upon the sands. "They're _here_!" she called out to her cousin. "Come on now - hide or something. Do something, anything!"

Taking a step forward, Ben opened his mouth to speak, to reassure Gwen that things would be okay somehow. But before he could quite utter a single word, the Omnitrix began flashing and beeping, tightening itself to perfectly fit against Ben's wrist. Startled, he had only a couple seconds to glance down at it, before the sound of a _pop!_ was heard, and then Ben became aware of nothing at all.

Still waded out into the lagoon, Gwen slowly moved backward, until she was up to her chin in the water. Staring blankly back at the space where her cousin had just been standing, she feared that she'd maybe lost her mind. One second he was standing there, the next, he wasn't, and it made no sense. Was he invisible? Had he disappeared entirely? Was she just seeing things? _Had_ she lost her mind?

"How'd the Omnitrix…?" she murmured, before looking over in the direction of the beach, watching as a small group of Forever Knights approached the hut.

"It looks like someone's been living here," one of them said.

"Who cares if there's aborigines or not?" said another. "We came here for that Omnitrix, not to explore the place for the thousandth time."

"Well, I just hope it's actually here this time," said a third, the oldest one amongst them. "If the Omnitrix isn't here, it'll be someone's head come tomorrow morning."

Silence falling on the group then, they walked on past the hut, pausing as they came within inches of the lagoon. Trying not to make a sound or give a single splash, Gwen waded even further back, taking shelter behind some reeds in the darkness.

"Sir…" one of them said in a nervous voice. "The tracker _was_ just giving off a strong reading for right here - this precise spot. But now…"

"Now _what_?" replied the older man.

"… Now there isn't any reading at all whatsoever. It's as if the Omnitrix was here but just vanished, or something."

Not saying anything at first, the older man marched up toward the Knight holding whatever sort of tracking device he had, and he looked as though he might strike him, but then a sound went off, coming from said device, and the older man paused his actions.

"I'm getting another reading!" the younger Knight exclaimed. "It's coming from… all over? Wait… now it's disappeared again… what's going on?"

"Oh, never mind what's going on, let's just get back to headquarters. I'm sick of these wild goose chases," a fourth man said.

"I agree," said another.

Sighing, the older Knight snatched the device from the younger one's hand, before leading a march back toward the sands, aiming for the helicopter. "Curse this island," he said as he walked. "May we never come back here again. If we've learned anything, it's that the Omnitrix is definitely not here. Maybe it's a diversion tactic, some kind of trick, but if it were really here, we'd have found it by now…"

Slowly moving away from behind the reeds, Gwen watched quietly as the Forever Knights made it back onto their helicopter. As the blades above it began whirring, stirring up sand as they did so, she cautiously moved herself up the inclination of muddiness, out onto the land itself. Reaching a hand forward to where her cousin had been standing just earlier, she grasped at the air, hoping to find an invisible arm or wrist, perhaps. There was nothing there, however, and she slumped onto the ground, dropping to her knees.

Ben was gone.

* * *

><p>"Where am I? How'd I get here… wherever here is?"<p>

Turning round and round, looking wildly about at everything he could lay his eyes on, Ben found himself in a strange place. It was completely dark, or else, it would have been, if it weren't for the stars that also surrounded the place. Like a starlit void of some sort, Ben found it to be, all at once, scary, confusing, and entirely too cool. But none of this answered the question of how he'd gotten here in the first place, wherever this place happened to be.

"I brought you here," someone said then, and Ben whipped his head around to face their direction.

"I know you!" Ben said, blinking. "You're that guy from that dream I had when I was a kid. You're a professor or something. I guess this is a dream? Another one?"

"I need your help, if you don't mind lending it to me," the man replied. " And no, this is not a dream, but you can tell yourself it is if it makes you feel better."

"Uhm, right… Help you? Sure, but, can you at least tell me how I got here? And where's Gwen? And, by the way, who exactly _are_ you?"

"She's back where you left her, and she is going to be fine. I had to remove you from where you were, or else the Forever Knights would have taken the Omnitrix, and a domino affect of consequences would have been put into place. To stop this, I, as I said, had to remove the Omnitrix before they had a chance to obtain it. You happened to be wearing it, so you came along with it. Oh, and, they call me Professor Paradox."

"Okay then, Paraodox, how do you know Gwen is ok? When you, you zapped me away - or whatever you wanna call it - the Forever Knights were just about to land and-"

"And since the Omnitrix is no longer there, they have no need to stay, nor any need to find and harm Gwen," Paradox said calmly. "I think it's best if you remove the Omnitrix again, actually, once I return you. I've consulted with Azmuth, and he thinks it's for the best, as well, at long last."

"Remove it again? How'd you know I removed it in the first place? In fact, where have you been since that first time I met you when I was a kid in that dream, and how do you know Azmuth? And where are we now? You still haven't explained that bit." Sighing, Ben then mumbled, "Well I guess that's to be expected, since this _has to be_ a dream, or else, a hallucination or something."

"I only explain what's necessary," he answered Ben, before adding, "When it's necessary. And as far as the rest goes, let's just say that I had a hand in the storm that day, when Gwen helped you get that thing off your wrist in the first place. And, again, it is not a dream, but if you're so insistant on saying it is, then that's your decision."

His eyes widening a bit, Ben attemped to move forward, toward the professor, but he found himself unable to do so. "This is _so_ a dream."

Rolling his eyes, Paradox said to him, "Gwen removed the Omnitrix once. She can remove it again. She might not have a complete mastery of her powers, but she is quite good with them, no? When I send you back to her-"

"You mean, when I wake up?"

"-_when I send you back to her_," Paradox continued on, appearing slightly annoyed. "What you need to do is to have her do just that - remove the Omnitrix. I tried before to rid you of it. It was meant to be lost in that storm. The two of you weren't meant to be lost within it, as well, but then again, sometimes things happen for a reason."

"Well if this isn't a dream - but we both know it is - why can't you just go back and fix it, so she and I _aren't_ lost in the storm along with the watch? Then it can be gotten rid of, like you want, and the Forever Knights probably won't find it, and well, me and her won't end up stuck on some island in the middle of nowhere for almost a year."

"As I said just before, sometimes things happen for a reason," Paradox returned simply. "Even _I_ don't understand every single thing about the complex and intricate universe we reside in. I understand most, but not all. And so, with what I do know, I understand that if you were left on the island with the Omnitrix for any length of time out from the time I took you away, then the Forever Knights would have indeed gotten their hands on it."

"Huh?" Ben said, scratching his head.

"If I hadn't taken you and the Omnitrix away when I did, they'd have kidnapped you and Gwen, and forced the Omnitrix off of you, taking it for themselves. If I'd taken you away now and sent you back the very next night, then they'd simply come back and get it again. Repeat this cycle for many moons, and you'll find that in every outcome, they end up with the Omnitrix, utilizing it for their own, no good deeds."

"Well then, what can be done about it? They're what? Destined to win?"

"There is a loophole of sorts," Paradox went on to say. "See, if you return to a point in time where the Forever Knights have aborted their search for the Omnitrix altogether, then you'd have time enough to figure out what to do with it. You could, as I suggest, have Gwen remove it. You could destroy it."

"Why would I destroy it?"

"If the Forever Knights aren't after it, you can be guaranteed that someone always will be. So I would destroy it, if I were you. When I spoke with Azmuth about it, he agreed with me. As long as you have it, you will carry the burden of both utilizing it for good, and of keeping it out of the hands of those who wouldn't do good with it."

"And how can you be so sure that I won't just, well, win myself? So to speak. You know, like, what if I just keep it on, get Gwen and myself back to the real world, and just keep fighting off whatever comes our way, for the rest of my life? I've kept it pretty much safe so far, what's the big deal all of a sudden?"

"You'll just have to take my word for it, Ben," Paradox said.

Infuritated by the simplicity of his response, Ben furrowed his brow, balling his hands into fists. "Look here, if this is seriously, really happening, then you send me back to Gwen right now, and tell us how to get off of that island."

Sighing, Paradox lowered his head. "I have a feeling that I shouldn't be doing what I'm about to do, but perhaps I must, just to assure you that trusting me is necessary at this time. You haven't had much trouble doing so the other times we've met, but then, perhaps those were alternate versions of you. Maybe I've happened upon a particularly stubborn version of you within an untrusting universe."

"What are you talking about?" Ben asked, his head beginning to ache as it was wrought with confusion, but before he got an answer, the professor had snapped his fingers, and the starry void around them disappeared.

Ben soon found himself within a weird craft of some kind. Glancing out a nearby window, he again saw a dark plain, dotted with stars. Was he in outer space, on a space craft?

"Watch now, carefully," came the voice of Paradox in his ear, and Ben turned around quickly upon hearing the sound of a scream.

"Gwen?" he cried out, lurching forward, but the professor held out an arm, stopping him. "You can't do anything about it. We're just watching it happen. We're not really here, so we can't affect what's going on."

Staring forward in terror, Ben watched as two men in masks stood on either side of his cousin, extending small, metal rods toward the sides of her body.

"Do it now," one of them said, using his free hand to point toward someone else, someone who was tied down in a chair, his arm outstretched painfully on its arm, strapped and bound against it. "Remove the Omnitrix using your powers!"

"No!" Gwen cried out, before screaming in pain as the masked men struck her sides with the rods, small volts of electricity hitting her body painfully. "I won't give the Omnitrix over to you!"

"Why aren't you helping her?" Ben shouted over to the person strapped in the chair; it was he himself, an alternate Ben, bound and helpless to do anything.

"He can't do anything," Paradox said. "Look more closely."

Walking right up to his alternate self, Ben glared down at the figure, before feeling a chill run down his spine. The alternate version of hisself had eyes that were rolled back into his head, a head that hung backward, limp and almost lifeless. He could tell he was still breathing, but only just.

"Am I going to die?" the current Ben wondered aloud.

As if somehow answering him, one of the masked men then said to Gwen, "Remove the watch or we'll finish him off for good! And then you'll be next. And _then_, we'll _still_ find a way to take this Omnitrix. We'll still get all the power anyway. Earth, and perhaps, one day, all of the universe, will be at the mercy of the Forever Knights."

"No!" the current Ben said, moving toward his cousin, only to find that the scene was indeed helpless, as his body passed right through hers, as if he were a ghost. "Just do whatever they want. Don't get yourself hurt. Gwen!"

"This is the future, should you return any earlier than a point where the Knights have aborted their mission," Paradox called out to him from across the room. "I'm sorry, but as you see, there isn't much of an other choice that doesn't involve uneccesary deaths. And, judging from your reaction just now - where you'd risk the Forever Knights harming the whole world for the sake of sparing Gwen... I stand by my initial conclusion: it'd be best if the power-wielding artifact be destroyed, once and for all."

"Help her or get us out of here!" Ben shouted back at him, not caring about much else at the moment.

Hanging his head, Paradox said, "I have no choice, I am now positive of it, other than to return you to a different point in time."

Still trying to reach out to Gwen, though it was impossible, Ben was too preoccupied to notice Paradox as he raised a hand, snapping his fingers once more.

. . .

Sitting bolt upright on the sands of the beach, Ben gasped for air, feeling as though he may never catch his breath again. "Oh wow, it was a dream…" he said to himself, blinking rapidly. "Or, a nightmare."

Clambering to his feet, he gave a stretch, before heading for the direction of the hut. Along the way, he paused when he noticed the sight of a small wooden barrel. Situated where the glass jar of stones had been just before, it appeared to have stones of its own inside it. Kneeling down, Ben realized that there was no broken glass to be found anywhere around it, though there should have been. Had Gwen gotten up before him and cleaned it all up?

Feeling confused, Ben reached into the barrel and began to remove the stones, finding that there were far more there than there had been at last count. One by one, he took out the stones, eventually counting up to a sum of twenty.

"Twenty?" he said aloud, feeling altogether confused, and rightly so; hadn't there been only eight the other day?

Shaking his head, Ben gathered up the rocks and dropped them back into the barrel, before standing up and dusting the sand from his knees. Making his way further to the hut, he was just about to enter it as Gwen stepped out from within it, bumping into him.

"Sorry," he said, placing his hands at either side of her waist to steady her as she rocked backward a bit.

"Ben?" she whispered, her voice sounding hoarse and strained as she stared back at him.

"What? What is it?" he asked her, noticing her almost deranged-looking demeanor, before glancing down as he realized that the strand of hair that had once been cut off at the pincers of a crab, was now grown out quite long; now that he noticed it, she herself was a bit taller than usual. "Gwen?"

"Where have you been?" she asked him, her chest heaving a bit, as if she might cry. "Where have you been for the past year?"


	10. Chapter 10: Fifteen

**Chapter 10**

Rubbing sticks together to make a small fire later on the evening that he came back to her, Ben would occasionally glance up and over to Gwen as he did so. She'd barely spoken two words that day, and this trance of sorts that she seemed to be in concerned him greatly.

Though he himself didn't want to believe it at first, Ben soon came to terms with the fact that the meeting with Paradox hadn't been a dream after all. Though he'd been away for what had felt like a mere hour, at the very most, he'd actually been away for an entire year, and the effects thereof were now quite obvious to him.

For starters, not only had Gwen grown taller, but he had, as well. His hair was much shaggier, too, and it now nearly reached his shoulders. Finally, his voice was a bit deeper, and it didn't really seem to crack much at all. He'd figured that much out while telling Gwen about his encounter with Paradox, a story that she'd listened to quietly, not saying much of anything in return. She seemed shaken, almost; fragile.

"So do you want me to cook us some fish for dinner?" Ben asked her, finally moving away from the fire to instead go sit beside her. "Come on, maybe if you eat something you'll feel better."

"Maybe," Gwen said quietly, folding her hands in her lap nervously.

Sighing, Ben placed a hand atop both of hers, before moving his face in closely to her own. "Tell me what's wrong, Gwen. You act like you're afraid of me or something."

"Maybe I am," she answered, a sad look in her eyes. "Maybe I am _terrified_ that you'll disappear again, and leave me all alone for another year - maybe even longer."

"I already told you, Paradox plotted when and where to send me back to, to avoid the Forever Knights. I'm not going to just disappear again, Gwen."

"You don't _get it_!" Gwen exclaimed, her hands balling into fists. "To you, it felt like a little bit of time had passed. To _me_, it was a year. An entire _year_! At first, I thought you'd come right back, just as quickly as you'd disappeared. Then, after a few weeks, I thought maybe you'd made it back to Bellwood somehow, and that you were organizing a party to come back and get me. After a few months had passed… well, I thought you'd gone for good, back to Bellwood, just like you kept saying you wanted to be all that time…"

Leaning his face in more closely, until his forehead was pressed against hers, Ben took hold of Gwen's hands in both his own, before saying quietly, "I would never do that to you. And, I'm really sorry you ever thought I would have."

Feeling Ben squeeze her hands as he held them, Gwen sighed quietly, the tip of her nose just barely nuzzling against his as they kept their foreheads pressed together. "I'm sorry, too. I guess I should have known better, but after so long, I just couldn't come up with anything else that explained it. Oh, Ben, I'm just so glad you're back here with me."

"Me, too. I'm so sorry, again; I'll always be sorry that you were left alone for so long. I'll never do it to you again - not for the Omnitrix, not for the world."

Beginning to cry, Gwen turned her head slightly then, bringing her lips in to close against Ben's. Returning the kiss, the fifteen and a half year old boy let go of her hands, instead slipping his arms around her, holding onto her as they let their bodies simultaneously fall backwards onto the sand.

"Don't cry," Ben finally said to her, breaking the kiss as he kept her wrapped up in his arms. "You don't need to, not anymore." He then resumed the kiss, his hands moving to slide up and down the back of Gwen's makeshift top.

Moving her hands to run through his longer than normal hair, Gwen kissed Ben back again, their lips parting and moving back together again over and over. After a few moments of this, Ben broke away, before saying, "We'll find a way to destroy the Omnitrix. We'll do it tomorrow morning."

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Gwen whispered back, her eyes searching his. "I know you said that that Paradox guy told you that you should, but if we do, maybe we won't have any way to get back off this island. You do realize that, right?"

Ben, who didn't have it in his heart to tell Gwen about the alternate future Paradox had led him to, where he was as good as dead and where she herself was in danger of dying, too, simply gave a nod of his head. However important getting off the island had once been to him, it certainly wasn't worth jeopardizing Gwen. Echoing what he'd been told before, he said to her,

"Sometimes we really want things, sure. But, then again, sometimes some things are meant to be. It took me long enough, but I guess I get that now."

"You really mean that?" Gwen asked him, her gaze still penetrating his as he held her tightly against him.

Kissing Gwen once more, slowly, in earnest, Ben eventually pulled away, before planting an additional kiss on her forehead and saying, "Yeah, I do"

Smiling, Gwen closed her eyes and replied, "You're right, you know. It _did_ take you long enough to figure this all out."

Sticking his tongue out at her in response, Ben placed a kiss on Gwen's nose, before kissing her hard on the mouth; breaking away, Gwen gave a small laugh.

"I thought you were gonna cook us something for dinner," she said, wrinkling her nose up at him as she grinned.

"I can think of better things to do than cooking," Ben answered her, before kissing her again, just as hard.

"I can, too, but I'm kinda hungry," Gwen mumbled, breaking away once more.

Sighing apathetically, Ben rolled away from her, onto his back. "_Fine_," he said, before turning to look at her, giving her a crooked grin. "I'll go catch us some dinner."

Sitting up on the sand and drawing her knees to her bosom as she watched her cousin walk away for the hut, where he kept a makeshit fishing pole, Gwen herself gave a crooked grin. She could feel a strange warmth encompassing her body, limb by limb. She was also quite sure that there must be a bit of a blush on her face. Whatever the cause was, Ben had everything to do with it - she was certain of that. Maybe it had to do with having not seen him for an entire year. Maybe she'd just missed his touch - his kiss - a little too much. Maybe it was just because they were fifteen now. Yes, she considered, maybe it had to do with how much he'd grown -or how much she'd grown- whatever the case, it caused her ears to buzz, her body to flush.

Her head spinning, blood rushing, Gwen felt that an all new sort of trouble was on the horizon for her. Then again, it was just a feeling she had.


	11. Chapter 11: Butterflies

**Chapter 11  
><strong>

* * *

><p>It had been the near equivalent of a night's sleep since the Tennyson cousins had vowed to destroy the Omnitrix. While Gwen had eventually managed to fall asleep there on the sands by the camp fire, somewhere in the wee hours of morning, Ben had been kept wide awake the entire time, thoughts of just how he'd manage to destroy the Watch keeping him from actually getting to sleep. And so as he sat there on the sands, his eyes finally fell upon the sight of his cousin, who had lucked out far better in the sleep department than he himself had.<p>

Her figure was alighted by the blazes of the campfire and the breezes tousled her hair about lightly. As he became more focused upon the sight, Ben found himself smiling faintly. Looking at Gwen seemed to - at least momentarily - pull him away from his uneasy thoughts.

As the wind danced across Gwen's skin, she gave a bit of a shiver, and Ben moved to sit over, nearer to her, placing a hand at her shoulder. Despite the shudder he'd witnessed, her skin was warm to the touch. Moving to then lie next to her, Ben made to wrap his arm around her, snugging it about her waist. His lips came to rest at the back of her shoulders, and his eyes fell upon the sight of the freckles at the back of her neck. As the moments passed, he began to silently count the number of them, one by one, before eventually placing a finger against her skin, connecting the dots with an invisible line via his fingertip.

As he traced this invisible line from dot to tinier dot, Gwen would, on occasion, shiver or sigh. At one point she tried to roll over onto her other side, but Ben kept her securely in place with his arm around her, and she ceased any struggles to move.

_Gwen was beautiful._ This thought alone was one that Ben could not get out of his mind. Here he was, all on his own with a most perfect creature on a most beautiful island - an island they had all to themselves. If it weren't for missing their family, then life might've been considered quite perfect for them. Snuggling in a bit more closely to her, Ben soon found himself caught up in the fragrance of Gwen's hair. Whatever it was exactly, he couldn't be sure, but he found it to be both floral and musky, and it intoxicated him.

"I'll never let you go, Gwen," he murmured into her skin, before planting several small kisses at the bared tops of her shoulder blades.

She tasted of honeysuckle to him, and so he continued to kiss her more, his lips trailing a line all the way from the back of her shoulders to the back of her neck, then around to the side of it. Amidst all of this, Gwen gave a slight groan, and the sound of it returned Ben to his senses. What was he doing? Surely he shouldn't be touching and kissing her this way, and especially not as she sleeps. Still, it was an intriguing thing, whatever it was that made him feel compelled to place his lips and his fingers to her skin.

Inwardly sighing, Ben eventually relaxed back into a more still state as he lay there alongside his cousin, an arm draped about her middle. Little did he know that she wasn't so much asleep as he'd assumed her to be, and if he could have taken just one look at the pink flushed across her face, he'd have known it for sure.

Lying with her face opposite to his, Gwen subtley snuggled in even closer to her cousin, liking how secure it made her feel to have his arm wrapped around her so tightly. True, though it was, that his kisses had awakened her, she found that she'd never quite gotten woken up in such a nice way before in all her life. In either case, the places where Ben's lips had touched her where still burning; still tingling. She longed for the feeling of it again, but at the same time felt too awkward to actually just say so.

And so, in silence, the two remained huddled together on the sands of the beach by the fire, both thinking the other asleep, neither saying a single word to one other. The only sounds to be heard were the sounds of the breeze and the nearby water as it crashed upon the shore. An occasional bug chirp broke this consistant melody, but not much else, and it wasn't until Ben felt the splash of a raindrop against his cheek that he felt compelled to move from his spot.

Awakening himself from his half-awake, half-dosed off state of being, the tanned young man got to his feet, before lifting up Gwen in his arms, intending to take them both to the shelter of the little hut. However, the redhead faltered with her feign of sleep as she felt herself become lifted up into his arms.

"Sorry I woke you," Ben said to her as he carried her away, toward the hut. "But rain is starting to fall, so I figured we'd do better under a rooftop than without one."

"Makes sense," Gwen replied in a sleepy sort of voice, before hitching her legs out to the side. "I can walk, though."

"Well, alright," Ben said, clumsily releasing her from his grasp as they both lost their footing and balance; the result was a tangled mess of limbs there on the ground just before the hut.

"Good going," Gwen said, unlinking her arm from around Ben's neck as they simultaneously moved to get up from the ground.

"You're the one who just had to be put down," Ben pointed out, before getting to his feet once more. "Now then, I-"

However, taking a single step forward, the teenager found himself on the ground again, this time lying on his back. Gwen, who'd knocked him down again, was straddling him, her knees at either of his sides.

"And I suppose _this_ is all my fault, too?" she asked him, not bothering to get up off him, even as the rain began to pour in something fierce.

"Well, obviously it is," Ben agreed, his palms feeling the mushy mud beneath the grass on the ground beneath him.

"Right," Gwen replied. "You've got two left feet, but every single fall is my fault. I see."

"Well, not _every_ single fall," Ben then said to her, before quickly reaching for her waist and tickling her, rolling them first over onto their sides, and then some more, until their roles were reversed, with Gwen lying on her back, Ben hovering over her.

As he looked down at his cousin amidst the falling raindrops, he said to her, "You know, I'm getting a distinct feeling of déjà vu…"

"Yeah, well, if it involves a crab cutting off some of my hair, then you're a dead man this time," Gwen answered him at once, before moving quickly to flip Ben back on over to his back, where she could hover supreme once more. "Besides," she then said to him. "Who's the real winner now?"

"I'd have to say, _I_ am…" Ben answered her, lifting his face as he brought a hand to the back of her hair, bringing her face downward to greet his as their lips met for a kiss.

Deepening the kiss a bit, Gwen relaxed her stance as she hovered over Ben, allowing her body to slowly meld downward atop his, all while their lips remained locked, sharing a kiss that could've set nearly anything ablaze. Eventually though, the pair parted, and when they did, it was Gwen who scrambled to her feet first, a troubled look on her face.

"What's wrong?" Ben asked her, both looking and feeling puzzled.

"I… I don't know," Gwen answered truthfully, placing a hand over her chest. "I just feel dizzy, like I might be coming down with something. I don't know… it's a weird feeling."

"Yeah, I think I know what you mean," Ben admitted, a hand against his own lower stomach. "It happens sometimes when I think about you, or kiss you, or, well, even _think_ about kissing you."

Unsure as to why, this admission sent Gwen's heart into overdrive, and her face turned a shade of scarlet unlike any ever seen before. "Well then, maybe I should go over to the other side of the island for a little while, so that I don't make you feel any, well, sicker, you know?"

"No, don't go," Ben said to her, raising his voice a bit to talk over the sound of the rain. "Come back into the hut with me for the night. Please, won't you? It's coming a real bad storm outside anyway."

Still feeling dizzy and lightheaded, Gwen glanced upward toward the sky. She could spy lightning and grey-to-black clouds all about; Ben was certainly right about the weather.

"Well, alright then," she finally relented, walking past Ben and entering on into the tent.

Soon following after her, the young man hesitated in the doorway, saying, "You know that sick feeling we both get?"

"Yeah, Ben?"

"Well, Gwen… does it really make you, personally, _sick _-sick, or just kind of sick?"

Confused, she answered, "I have no idea what you just said."

Sighing, Ben tried again. "What I mean is, sure, it feels funny, but it's also funny in a good kind of way. Do you get my drift, Gwen?"

Moving to settle down by a wall within the hut, Gwen gave her a cousin a nod of her head, before looking away, too embarrassed to keep eye contact with Ben for much longer. She did indeed get his drift - that was part of the problem.


	12. Chapter 12: Fumbling

**Chapter 12**

Gwen had been up since before dawn now. Having caught a couple of fish, she now sat before the rebuilt campfire, cooking them for that morning's breakfast. As she looked out over the water beyond the beach, she felt a strange chill run along her spine. With the rising sun would come new prospects. One was how on earth she and her cousin were going to successfully destroy the Omnitrix. Another was regarding the seemingly brand new issues that had arisen as of the night before.

What could or would she and Ben possibly have to say to each other following the awkward events of the night before? Gwen had no idea, and she was also pretty sure that Ben would have no bright ideas about it, either.

Moving the fish away from the fire, Gwen carefully placed the skewered food down upon a cloth on the sands, before looking over her shoulder, back in the direction of the hut.

Within the dwelling, a straggly-haired Ben had just awoken. Stretching his arms beyond his head, he sat with his back against a wall. He had vague flashes of memories from the night before running through his mind, and they wouldn't seem to clear away. In particular, the image of Gwen's startled face seemed to strike him pretty hard. He hadn't meant to scare her with his kisses or with his touches. He felt really pathetic, coming to the realization that he might not be able to express his feelings for Gwen in a way that didn't scare her.

Thinking of her fearful expression again, he ultimately decided that it was ueless - that _he_ was useless. The best he could surely hope for was for he and Gwen to be able to go about their day as if the night before hadn't happened at all. If only that were possible.

Getting up and exiting the hut, Ben immediately spotted his cousin down on the sands of the beach, near a small fire. It was then that Ben smelled the fish, too. Gwen had already made breakfast for them, or so it seemed.

"Morning," he said to her as he approached her, before taking a seat across from her on the sand.

"Morning," she replied, not meeting Ben's eyes with her own. "I made us something to eat."

"Yeah, I can see that. Smells good," he answered, before shifting slightly.

Despite her initial inward thoughts on the matter, Gwen hesitated for a moment, before saying, "Listen, about last night-"

"Maybe it's best if we don't talk about it," Ben said, before inwardly wincing as he saw the stung look on Gwen's face. "Er, I mean…"

"No, it's fine," she said to him, casting her eyes downward. "We probably _shouldn't_ talk about it."

Sighing, Ben got to his feet, before dusting hisself off and walking away, off toward the forest.

"Where are you going?" Gwen called after him, but he didn't answer, nor did he even bother to look back. All he seemed to be capable of was saying the wrong things anyway, so what was even the point of giving her some sort of answer?

Left to her own devices as Ben disappeared altogether into the woods, Gwen hastily stood up, before picking up the cooked fish on the skewers and tossing them as hard as she could forward, into the water. Why had she even bothered to cook at all? She was clearly pretty useless, was she not?

Taking a nearby, broken piece of a jar, she stepped to the edge of the water and collcted some of it into the container before returning to the campfire and empyting the collected water over it, dousing its flames. Feeling fit to cry, she then threw the jar as well, before wading back out into the water, not stopping until she was up to her neck. She'd just stay there, she decided to herself, until the ocean decided it wanted to carry her away. It might not have been the best of ideas, but with everything going so awkward and insane lately, she felt that she'd just as soon be carried away by the waves than to do the inevitable, which was to face her feelings for her cousin.

And after all, why _did_ Ben have to be so stubborn anyway? As far as Gwen was concerned -the more and more she thought about it- the events from the night before were definitely worth at least _mentioning_, if not all-out discussing. It was _not_ worth Ben just storming away from her with a complete refusal to discuss it. She knew she couldn't be sure about him, but just the thought of what had happened the night before -the touches, the kisses- made her heart race and her stomach squirm.

As she continued to stand out in the midst of the water for a good time longer, she eventually decided to give up her intent of letting the water simply drift her away. Instead, she stripped off her top (which she knew would weigh her down a bit too uncomfortably as she left the water) and she then dipped down beneath the water just once more, feeling the coolness of it wash over her, as if it were some form of a self-baptism. Finally, needing a breath of air, she arose up and broke the surface of the water once more, her long auburn locks _just_ managing to cover over her bare breasts as she stood there.

Unbeknownst to her, Ben had long since returned from the woods. Paused at the edge of the trees, he found that practically all of his other thought processes had come to a standstill as his eyes laid sight upon the vision of the half-naked Gwen standing amidst the light waves of the water. He could feel a strange sort of urge arise in his stomach as he watched her clutch the wet shirt she'd stripped herself of, before beginning to wade her way back to shore. Her hair was still covering over her chest, but just barely so, and while some small part of him felt that he should feel ashamed to be witnessing this sight, another part of Ben felt as if he couldn't have looked away from it even if his life had depended on it.

Watching and waiting until Gwen had reached the part of the sands and the rocks where the campfires were usually made and kept, Ben then felt enough courage to begin to step away from the woods further, walking more and more closely, until he, too, was standing on the sands and rocks there with his cousin.

"Gwen?" he said simply, looking back at her as she turned her head in surprise to look back at him.

"I… I thought you'd gone off, ran away into the woods," she said to him; she did little more than to simply make sure her hair was still hanging over her breasts to keep them covered as she spoke to him.

"Yeah, well, I did, but, I came back," Ben answered her simply, slowly turning to face his cousin as he spoke. "I was thinking about how I'd blown you off, and how unfair it was, and I was coming back to talk to you about it , but, you were in the water…"

By this point, Ben was standing right in front of the redhead, his own bare chest heaving ever so slightly as he looked back into her eyes. How he'd never quite noticed it before, he couldn't be sure, but he now saw that his cousin's eyes were a perfect almond shape, bejewled with the rarest and most sincerely beautiful emeralds known to mankind.

Feeling lost in the sight of them - practically entranced - Ben found himself slowly placing a hand on Gwen's tanned, damp shoulder. Her skin soft and smooth to the touch, he caressed his fingers first along it, and then down her arm, before pausing to take hold of her hand. Lifting his chin to again look into her eyes, Ben leant forward suddenly, still clasping onto Gwen's hand as his lips met the corner of her mouth, before moving lower, planting kisses along her jaw line… and eventually down her throat.

As the kisses gradually became harder and more determined, moving lower and lower, Gwen had a feeling that she should try to stop her cousin and his advances. She didn't though, finding that the feeling to fight back was quickly fleeting, before very well disappearing altogether.

No, Gwen instead gave in, letting Ben take control of her, letting him guide her into whatever new waves they'd fumble theirselves into next that night.


	13. Chapter 13: Collision

**Chapter 13**

It was a sound of thunder that eventually woke Gwen up. Sitting up and clutching at a stitch in her chest, she looked all about herself there in the darkness, before finally glancing up to receive several raindrops to the face. It was raining, impossibly dark out, and she seemed to be overcome with some sort of retrograde amnesia. She stumbled to her feet and found that she was wearing a makeshift dress of shorts that was made from a sheet wrapped around her, though it was torn nearer to the ankles.

Never minding that and walking forward a few steps, she narrowed her eyes against the windy rain, only to see a pile of rubbish and plank and straw where the hut once stood. Feeling more confused than ever, the redhead began to take off at a run, heading for the lagoon just up ahead. She wasn't sure why she was doing so, but it seemed to be drawing her to it, like a moth to a flame.

"Ben, where are you?" she finally had the sense to call out, her feet pausing just shy of stepping her off into the water of the lagoon itself. "Ben!"

When no answer came, the memory-clouded young woman leant to her knees there by the lagoon, before plunging her hands beneath a shallow part of it, her fingers sinking into mud. Digging and digging, she found herself eventually beginning to cry, though it would have been difficult to discern the tears rolling down her cheeks from the harsh raindrops that were also stinging at her skin. Stopping her digging suddenly as she came upon something buried there in the mud, Gwen lifted the object up with some difficulty, before washing it off in the water of the lagoon. Another few seconds later and it was clear that she'd somehow dug up the Omnitrix.

_Gwen, make haste. Now or never, remove that Watch, or doom will come for you, and then for many others, as well!_

Blinking, her eyes growing wide, Gwen took hold of the Omnitrix tightly in her hand as she stood up, before turning and running back toward the direction of where the hut had once stood.

_Who are you? _she suddenly recalls crying out to a strange, tall man in a white lab coat. _What do you want with me and Ben?_

_There'll be time for questions later… perhaps,_ Gwen remembers him answering her, before he hurried over to her side and grabbing her by the shoulders. _Where is Ben? Where is your cousin?_

_I don't know... He and I were both outside here on the sand when we fell to sleep..._

Remembering again, Gwen could practically still feel the pressure of the lab coat man's hand around her wrist as he took hold of it, dragging her away from the rubble of a hut, out and over toward the woods.

_Ben?_ she remembers the man calling out at the top of his lungs.

_What is going on?_ Gwen remembers asking, even as she still remained stood, rooted in reality, to the spot by the torn down hut. Why and how she was remembering all these things, she couldn't be sure. All she felt was that she could not let go of the Omnitrix in her hand for the world.

_Ben, come out from the woods now! I know you tore down the hut and covered up Gwen to protect her! I understand!_

Tears of confusion beginning to sting in her eyes again, Gwen glasped onto the Watch with both hands, casting her eyes downward toward the ground.

_They're _here_, Paradox!_ Ben's voice had rang out through the trees, answering the man with the lab coat.

_I _know _that! You have to come out now and let Gwen take off that Omnitrix right _now!

_What if they get her then, 'cos of me?_ Ben's voice had called back, sounding scared and nervous.

_They'll get more than just her if you don't let her go on and take that Watch off of you!_

Her tears subsiding a bit, the present-standing Gwen began spinning round and round on the spot, looking for any sight of anyone, anywhere. "Ben?" she called out. "Anyone?"

Then, suddenly, within the blink of an eye, Gwen felt herself become grabbed from behind. A hand was clasped over her mouth, an arm tightly woven around her waist as the person taking hold of her pulled her backwards. Trying as she was to dig her heels into the sand to pull away from whoever had taken hold of her, it was all to no avail, and Gwen soon found herself being pulled all the way up the beach, past the lagoon, beyond the normal places she and Ben would hang around, until she was dragged just into the woods North of the lagoon.

"Let me go!" she shrieked, the second the person had moved their hand away from her mouth. "I mean it! Let me go right now!"

"Just a moment, would you?" a familiar voice replied, causing Gwen to whip her head around, only to find it was the man in the lab coat that had grabbed her.

"Good - you!" she said. "Look here, you explain to me what's going on, right now."

"I could, but it'd cost us far too much precious time," the lab coat man answered her, before taking hold of her wrist. "Listen carefully: I'm taking you to Bellwood, by the docks, to be more precise. Ben is there, also, and he will explain everthing… afterward."

"Afterward? After what?" Gwen asked, a strange feeling taking over her body as the lab coat man squeezed onto her wrist more tightly.

"You'll arrive at the docks, and the Forever Knights will, also - they'll be following us now, since you took the Watch and since I'm taking you _and_ the Watch back to Bellwood with me. You and Ben will have to work together to destroy the Watch. You waited too long as it was when I gave you both your first chance. You can't blow this one."

Feeling as if she perhaps only half-understood what was going on, Gwen opened her mouth to ask more questions, but found herself unable to as she and the lab coat man began whirring impossibly quickly, traveling through both time and space at a break-neck speed. Another second later and, sure as the world, Gwen found herself on the docks of Bellwood.

"_Gwen_!" she heard Ben's voice call out to her at once, before turning and gasping as he threw his arms around her, squeezing her.

"I told you I'd bring her back, didn't I?" the lab coat man said.

"Yes, Paradox, you did," Ben admitted, a hand at the back of Gwen's head as he held her closely to himself. "So what happens next?"

"The Watch, Gwen?" Paradox said to the redhead, before taking the Omnitrix into his own grasp as she passed it over to him; he subsequently threw it onto the boardwalk of the docks.

Looking upward simultaneously, Ben and Gwen could see the skies growing grey, clouds darkening wildly and vastly as whirring hellicoptors began to crowd into the airspace as much as was possible.

"They're here," Paradox said ominously, indicating the fleet of Forever Knights in the sky overhead. "I have told you both what must be done."

"And where exactly are _you_ off to then?" Ben called after Paradox, but the coat-befitted man was already whirring himself away from the scene.

"Right," Gwen then said, pulling herself out of her cousin's arms as she moved to stand in front of the Omnitrix. "He said we have to destroy it."

"Yeah, exactly. But how? We wasted too much time on the island, when we could've been doing this."

"We're wasting time _now_, Ben," Gwen pointed out in a pained sort of voice, before glancing upward as the fleet of helicopters made their way to come down to some sort of landing field. "Let's just do this."

Closing her eyes and outstretching her hands, Gwen focused every ion of power in her body into the form of her purple Anodite power, forming an energy ball of it with her hands before throwing it at the Watch; nothing much happened to it. Groaning, Gwen once again squeezed her eyes shut tight, focusing everything she had into another, larger energy ball, before throwing it at the Omnitrix, which barely twitched.

Running up behind Gwen and catching her as she fell, exhausted, into Ben's arms, the young man gently lay her onto the ground, before using his fists to pound at the Watch, over and over again - naturally, it was to no avail, though that didn't keep him from trying, and trying some more, until his knuckles were good and bloodied.

Finally, just as one of the Forever Knight 'copters managed to touch down, a sound of screeching tires and metal was heard from off somewhere in the distance. Using a hand to sheild his view as the windpower from the landed helicopter stung his eyes, Ben watched in awe as a familiar looking, old R.V. came rushing to the rescue, engine revving.

"Grandpa!" Ben cried out, before narrowing his eyes to focus as the white-headed man driving the R.V. called out to him, "I'm doing this for you guys, so keep her safe, you hear? And when the time is right, run for it!"

Unable to have enough time to even process and compute precisely what his beloved grandfather meant by this, Ben still had sense enough about himself to throw his body over and atop Gwen's just in the nick of time, as the R.V. t-boned into the landed helicopter; the two melded matters of metal and fire and oil then skidded across the boardwalk, landing somewhere atop the Omnitrix.

Lifting his face to look at the wreckage and where it had come to rest, Ben heard his grandfather's words ring out in his ears once more: _And when the time is right, run for it!_

"Come on, Gwen, get up!" Ben said to his cousin then, helping her to her feet; the two then took off at top speed, running away from the bomb-to-be that was the R.V. and the helicopter combined atop the Omnitrix. Finally reaching a row of hedges at least seven or so feet away, Ben and Gwen clasped hands and leapt over to land behind it just as the inevitable explosion went off, sending a heat blast through the near vicinity, followed by a shower of metallic parts and other shrapnel. Sounding and feeling out of breath as he spoke, Ben kept himself ducked behind the hedgerow, saying to Gwen, "Are you okay?"

Also remaining low behind the hedgerow, the redhead shook her head, her eyes wide in a sort of shock.

"We just got rid of the Omnitrix and the Forever Knights for good, Gwen!" Ben said to her, but she simply closed her eyes, bringing her hands to cup over her face as she began to cry.

"Yeah, we did," she said, in a muffled voice. "And we just lost our Grandpa Max, too."

* * *

><p><strong>And yes, all questionable info will be filled in the blanks in coming chapters, in case anyone was worriedcurious about that while reading the bits where Gwen had retrograde amnesia. Thanks for reading and/or possibly reviewing! Have a great day!  
><strong>


	14. Chapter 14: Reliance

**Chapter 14**

It was the sound of distant helicopters that caused Ben to stir, and then to eventually wake from his sleep. Sitting upright and trying to strain his gaze best he could to see how far away the helicopters he heard were, he jumped to his feet when he realized that they could be arriving within at least half an hour's time, at best.

"We should have gotten this Watch off my wrist first thing!" he shouted at himself, before looking down at the figure of Gwen as she lay on the sand, completely bare-skinned, and completely beautiful. But Ben didn't have the time to admire her as she was at the moment. Hurrying off into the little hut, he scoured up a long bed sheet, before rushing back outside. Kneeling next to his sleeping cousin, Ben carefully draped the sheet all about her, leaving but a space near her nose so that air could get to her more freely. Once he was satisfied that she was hidden, he took on part two of his spur-of-the-moment plan.

Picking up a nearby piece of plank, he took to beating the hut all about, loosening the planks, bark and straw-mud that it was comprised of. For a good fifteen minutes he did this, before finally leaping atop the caved-in hut, stomping and jumping atop it again and again, until it was resulted into nothing more than an insignificant heap of rubbish mashed together.

Looking back toward the skies, Ben could tell that the 'copters were closer than ever, but he told himself that he couldn't panic. All he _could_ do was to keep carrying on out his idea. Now that Gwen was hidden and the hut was destroyed, the helicopters wouldn't be able to denote anything of any real interest from so far up in the skies, as they would be. And while they now had nothing to distract their attention in that way, Ben took off running for the woods. He _was_ wearing the Omnitrix, after all, and seeing as that's what the Forever Knights were undoubtedly after, it only made sense that he could best use hisself as a diversion tactic, if only to spare Gwen for the time being.

Grabbing up a nearby piece of cloth and affixing it about his hindparts, Ben then did exactly as he'd planned to do, and he ran off in the direction of the woods, West of where the hut once stood. On and on he ran, deeper and deeper into the forest, in such a frenzy that he was unsure of where and when to stop - if ever.

Unknown to the fleeing Ben Tennyson, another figure had appeared on the island, just slightly short of where the hut once stood. This figure was a man in a lab coat, and though he could look up and see the impending helicopters, he calmly stepped over to the lumpy, sheet-covered mass lying on the sand. Uncovering Gwen, Paradox glanced away at once upon realizing that she was clothesless. However, he could be resourceful, and there really wasn't any time to waste, so Paradox knelt down and affixed the sheet as best he could to Gwen to resemble a dress, one that tyed at the corner of her neck and shoulder. As soon as this was accomplished, the time traveler took to shaking the sleeping redhead's shoulders, as hard as he could.

"What? Ben? Wait, who are you?" she mumbled sleepily, before gasping in pain as the man that had just been kneeling next to her grabbed her painfully by the arm, jerking her up to her feet as he himself took to standing.

"Where do you think Ben is?" the man then asked her, before observing the knocked down hut; the thought then occurred to him that maybe the boy had gone on the run, hoping that his cousin and their little house would not be noticed if they were hidden and knocked down, respectively. "Nevermind now. Just know, when we _do_ find him, it is beyond the realm of imperative that you remove that Omnitrix from his wrist. That's Plan 'B', anyway."

"What was Plan 'A'?" a thoroughly confused Gwen hesitated to ask.

"Plan 'A' was the two of you destroying the Omnitrix as soon as I sent Ben back here after his time away from you. _Then_ the two of you could have, urhm, solidified your relationship in a more physical matter, but you did things the other way around, and now, well, we have Forever Knights on our tails. Mazal tov."

A little creeped out that this man grasped onto her arm was speaking of how she and Ben had "solidified their physical relationship", Gwen decided to ask him no more questions just then, and simply let him lead her away from the broken down hut. They seemed to her to be heading for the Western part of the woods.

Feeling nervous about this, Gwen suddenly jerked her arm away from the man's hand, before putting her hands on her hips. "I have a question or two for you, before I just go off following you, you know."

Rolling his eyes and sighing, Paradox replied with, "Gwen, make haste. Now or never, remove that Watch, or doom will come for you, and then for many others, as well!"

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Gwen asked, before jerking her arm away as the older man reached for it, to grab onto it again. "Who are you?" she cried out to him instead. "What do you want with me and Ben?"

Answering her, Paradox said, "There'll be time for questions later… perhaps… but the real question is, where is Ben? Where is your cousin?"

"I don't know... He and I were both outside here on the sand when we fell to sleep…" Gwen replied, before gasping aloud as the older man took painful hold of her arm again, leading them off toward the woods once more.

"If that's the case," she could hear him saying, though he seemed to be mumbling mostly to himself. "If that's the _case_, then maybe my theory was right about him having gone on the lam."

Another few seconds later, and Paradox paused both himself and Gwen right before the trees. "_Ben_!" he cried out at the top of his lungs, seemingly calling directly into the mass of trees.

"What is going _on_?" Gwen demanded to know, but the older man ignored her question, and instead called Ben's name out a few more times, and then:

"Ben, come out from the woods _now_! I know you tore down the hut and covered up Gwen to protect her! I understand!"

Surprised, Gwen heard her cousin's voice call back out then, seconds later. "They're here, Paradox! The Forever Knights are here!" he said.

"I know that!" Paradox cried back in return. "You have to come out and let Gwen take off that Omnitrix _right now_!"

"What if they get her then, 'cos of me?" Ben replied in a highly nervous voice, to which Paradox answered him with, "They'll get more than just her if you don't let her go on and take that Watch off of you!"

"Oh, alright then!" Ben finally called back, rushing out from the trees as he extended his Watch arm forward. "Hurry, Gwen - I'm sure we don't have much time at all!"

"Just focus," Paradox told the redhead. "Close your eyes and focus all your energy into something that will pry that Omnitrix from Ben's arm."

"I'll try," she answered in a shaky voice, before indeed closing her arms and placing her hands at either side of the Watch, focusing and concentrating harder than she felt she had on anything else in a long time. Finally, after nearly a minute, the Watch began to unglue itself from Ben's skin. Another moment later, and it was pulled off completely, leaving a bloodied skinned mark in its absence.

"You did it, Gwen!" Ben exclaimed, though his smile faltered at once into a concerned frown as he watched his cousin collapse to her knees, her energy depleted. "No! Come on, Gwen, get up! We have to get out of here!"

"It's no use. She can't possibly even muster enough energy to teleport with me," Paradox replied in a grim tone of voice.

"Then teleport the Watch and yourself away!" Ben cried back.

"I'd just be setting myself up in a trap," Paradox explained to him calmly. "Me, a lone man, holding onto the one thing they're desiring so? They'd manage to get hold of it before I could find a way to destroy it. No, I think we should hide it for just now."

"The mud by the lagoon… under the shallow water," Gwen murmured, her voice sounding a bit slurred.

"What does she mean, Ben?" Paradox asked, and in turn Ben briefly explained how the mud - for whatever the reason - seemed to block the Omnitrix's signals when it was buried beneath it.

"I see," Paradox said, before kneeling down next to a still out-of-it Gwen. "When your strength comes back, go find this Omnitrix we're going to bury in the mud, and hold onto it for dear life. I swear to you I'll be back to take both it and you away from here," he said in a very quiet, monotone voice, speaking directly into her ear.

As he then stood, Paradox had to grab hold of Ben's shoulder to make him keep focus as the exhausted Gwen then fell right over onto her side, seemingly knocked right out of it.

"She'll be fine, trust me," Paradox said to him, before pulling at his shoulder again when Ben didn't budge. "_Listen_, we have to go bury this Omnitrix and then teleport out of here - the both of us."

"Yeah, right. Not without Gwen, I'm not going," Ben said at once.

"But I'll come right back here for her as soon as you're at your final destination - you have my word. Plus, she'll be protected from the Forever Knights until I do get her because the Watch will be buried under smothered signals, remember?"

Considering this for a moment, Ben finally gave a curt nod of his head, before picking up the Omnitrix and handing it over to Paradox. "Go bury this where she told you to, will you?" he said to him. "I just want a second or two with Gwen while you do that, then I'll go with you. Promise."

"Alright. Deal," Paradox replied, before hurrying off for the lagoon with the Omnitrix.

Kneeling down next to his cousin in her sheet-made dress, Ben leant over her and planted a kiss on her forehead, and then another one on her lips, before bringing his mouth to her ear. "I _swear_ you'll be getting out of here, too."

"Ben!" Omnitrix called from the lagoon then, having just buried the Omnitrix beneath the mud beneath the shallow part of the water. "Ben, it's time to go!"

Kissing Gwen once more on the lips, Ben said to her quietly, "I love you…" before turning and running to meet up with Paradox.

"Don't worry," the older man said as he took hold of Ben's forearm. "She'll be back with you in mere moments." The two of them then disappeared, right into thin air…

… … … … _Ben_ . . . _Ben_ . . . Ben?

Snapping out of his reverie, a suit-clad Benjamin Tennyson breathed heavily as he came back to his senses, having been brought back there by the sound of Gwen's voice repeating his name. Reaching over to take hold of her hand, he said to her in a very quiet voice, "Sorry. I was just lost in thought about, about that night."

"It's alright," she said to him, speaking in an equally quiet voice. "It's just, the service just ended. Our family is starting to leave, bit by bit. I figured you and I would leave together. Want me to go let our parents know that?"

"Uhm, sure," Ben answered, before leaning forward, placing his head in his hands; if the events hadn't proceeded as they had, then he wouldn't be sitting on a folding chair at his grandfather's funeral at the moment. If only he had had sense enough to destroy the Omnitrix right off the bat. But no, things had ended far too differently than they should have, and even now, three whole weeks after the wreck and investigation into Max Tennyson's death, Ben was still completely haunted by it all. The guilt seemed to stalk him, day or night.

"Ben?" Gwen said to him again, now as she stood before his folding chair, which he was still sat upon. "I just told them we're going off on our own for a walk. Besides, I need to go by the store to pick something up on our way to your house."

"Right," Ben answered her, his mind still at least half-preoccupied with the events that led up to the collision of the 'copter and the R.V.

As Ben stood, Gwen leaned in and placed a simple, but loving kiss on his lips, before breaking away just barely, the tips of their noses still nuzzling. "I miss him, too," she said. "I hurt. And I know you hurt, too. But you've got me, and I've got you, and we're gonna figure out how to deal with this together."

Not saying anything for a moment, Ben finally cleared his tear-threatened throat, before returning Gwen's initial kiss, moving a hand to the back of her head as he did so.

"You're right," he said. "We do have each other, if anything. I'm sure Grandpa Max would've liked to have known we ended up getting along so well."

Giving a faint laugh at this, Gwen leaned in to hug her cousin this time, saying, "I know, and to think, we once couldn't even stand the idea of going on a single road trip together."

"Yeah," Ben said, returning the hug. "It's insane how far we've come."


	15. Chapter 15: Fated

_This'll be the last chapter, folks. Many, many thanks to those who've read/reviewed/glanced at my story. C:  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 15<strong>

"I'll be just a few minutes," Gwen said to Ben, before disappearing into the bathroom of his home.

"Sure," he answered her, before walking over to the front door and slipping out of his shoes, seeing as he and she had just come back to his home after their walk after the funeral.

Ben was barely out of said shoes when he heard a knock at the door. Raising his eyebrows in slight surprise, he stepped on over to it and pulled it open. The man standing on the other side of the doorframe was all too familiar, and Ben couldn't help but to be a little bit nervous to see him standing there.

"Paradox," he finally said, giving a nod of his head. "Won't you come in?"

"No, thank you," the older man replied, before raising a beckoning finger toward Ben. "I'd much rather you come with me. Oh, don't give me that look - you'll be gone the equivalent of ten minutes, if that. I have something to show you that will finally help you make sense of everything."

Feeling quite compelled by hearing this, Ben finally gave in, despite his sense of wariness, and stepped out onto the front lawn in just his socked feet. "Well then, where are we off to, Paradox?"

"We are setting off to a point in the future about a decade and a half away from where we stand here, now. The setting: many planets have succumb to an overlord alien, one with malicious intent, and Earth is next on the list. Holding out for a good while, Earth finally does get their hero."

"Sounds like the movie that we ordered on Netflix last night," Ben replied, before willingly offering Paradox his forearm. "And if all that's really true, then I'm glad Earth will have such a competent hero. But how is hearing any of that going to, as you claimed, clear anything up for me?"

"Just wait, you impatient boy, and you'll see," Paradox replied in an annoyed voice, before taking hold of Ben's offered arm; within seconds, the two of them had seemingly disappeared right into thin air, as had been the case on more than one occasion before.

In the next second, Ben found himself and Paradox to be standing on what seemed to be a football field, or something at least as big.

"Right, we'll never teach them not to mess with us _that_ way, Loxley!" came a voice from somewhere off to the right. "Work on that uppercut!"

Turning to look to see who was speaking, Ben found himself looking at a small army of teenagers, all of whom were practicing sparring and battling with each other, in turn. Noticing in particular as a boy with sandy-blond hair made contact with the face of a slightly taller, slender-built girl, Ben almost wanted to raise his voice, to protest the boy hitting the girl so hard. However, his protest would have gone unwarranted and uncared for had he bothered to utter it in the first place, for the girl struck said, "_That's it, Loxley_! Good job!"

The boy called Loxley and the girl then high-fived each other, before the girl then glanced down at the watch on her wrist. "Alright, everybody! Attention! Attention, please!" she called out, and eventually everyone got the message and grew quiet.

"It's getting near to seven o'clock," the girl said to them, tossing her long, pale-blond hair back behind her shoulders as she spoke. "So most of us need to get home now, for dinner and homework and all that jazz. But we'll meet here tomorrow - same time, same place. Because, again, what's our motto?"

"Nobody better to kick alien butt than us!" a tanned girl with dark hair shouted, before the rest of the team shouted it in unison; afterward, the blond leader of the group added, "And also tomorrow, we shall work on coming up with a … better motto. Well anyway, good night, guys!"

As the teenagers began to disperse, to head down this street or that one, a porchlight came on over the roofing of a nearby house. It was a familiar looking house to Ben. Shaking his head, he gasped when it finally clicked in his mind where he knew it from. "That's my uncle Frank and aunt Natalie's house!"

"Indeed," Paradox simply replied, before he and Ben watched as a woman barely more than thirty years old stepped out onto the porch.

"That sort of _looks_ like Aunt Natalie…" Ben began, but as he took a few steps closer and narrowed his eyes, he realized that it wasn't his aunt; it could not be his aunt, because no one had those same, almond and emerald eyes, except for his Gwen.

"Maxy, come on in for dinner now!" the older version of Gwen called out, before placing her hands at her hips as the blond girl ran up to the doorstep, before hopping up onto the front porch. "You have a new bruise. You weren't really hitting each other again, were you?"

"Mom, spare me the lecture."

"_Maxime River Tennyson_!" the older Gwen scolded her. "If you don't want any lectures, then don't be giving _me_ any kind of back-talk like that. Got it?"

"Yes, ma'am," the blond-haired, green-eyed girl answered in an apologetic tone, before adding just as she and her mother turned to enter their home and close the door behind them, "I won't let it happen tomorrow, but Loxley just _had_ to learn to throw a better punch today, and…"

Paradox looked over to Ben then, and he could tell that the young man was trying to put all these new pieces together in his head. He might as well give him a little help.

"I know you've blamed yourselves - you and Gwen, that is - for not destroying the Omnitrix any sooner than it had been done. I even once blamed you for it, too. But the fact is, some things throughout time are sincerely meant to be, and they can't really be changed, or else events will become _too_ altered, you see?"

Shaking his head slightly, Ben replied, "I was following you at first, but now I'm a little confused, I think."

"Well, to put it a bit more bluntly, _yes_, you and Gwen could have destroyed the Watch and _then_ took to consummating your relationship there on the island. But you didn't. And either way, said consummation was very important, and I couldn't really let either of you leave the island and come back here before it occurred, or else it might not have occured at all."

Noticing Ben's confused look again, Paradox added, "I've seen much of the future; you must remember this. And I knew about her - Maxime River Tennyson - and I knew who her parents were, and with only barely having to do the math, I realized that for her to exist in this timeline at all, then her parents - that is, of course, you and Gwen - had to have created her and brought her into existence at a younger than average age for most couples."

"But Gwen isn't… we only did what we did one time," Ben replied, arching an eyebrow.

"How do you know Gwen isn't?" Paradox replied, folding his arms across his chest. "The point to this - the part that will alleviate, I would hope, much of your guilt - is the fact that, as I said, it was written in the stars for you and Gwen to create the future defender-of-Earth before leaving the island. So it was therefore, sad as it was and still is, written in the stars for your grandfather to end up being the one to destroy the Omnitrix. Just think if Gwen had done it alone, and lost the life already created? And if it hadn't have been Max Tennyson sacrificing himself, then perhaps the little one wouldn't have been called Maxime after him."

"My head's hurting so bad right now," Ben interjected. "I mean, I totally understand what you're saying now - for the most part - but my head is aching from realizing it all. Like, if Grandpa hadn't done what he did, then this blond girl wouldn't have _been_ a Maxy at all - that is what you're saying right? That all the tiny factors, well, factored into who she ended up being, to help defend Earth?"

"You've got it," Paradox said then with a smile, before grasping onto Ben's forearm and zapping them out of the future air and back into the air of the present, of the here and now.

"We're back in my front yard again," Ben noted, looking around.

"Yes, and not a second more than ten minutes has passed by you, either," Paradox answered, before reaching out and shaking Ben's hand. "Until we meet again."

"Until then," Ben repeated back, before releasing the time traveler's hand and watching him as he faded away into thin air.

Still feeling a little more than overwhelmed by all of the new information he'd been given, Ben walked back into his house and knocked on the bathroom door. "Gwen, you almost done in there?" he called out. "I wanna come in and grab some aspirin from behind the mirror."

There was a hesitation of silence, and then finally Gwen called back, "You can just come in here with me."

Finding this a bit odd, but really needing the aspirin more than the feeling odd about it was worth, the young man stepped on into the bathroom along with Gwen, who was sat at the edge of the bathtub, holding something in her hand. Not asking her what it was at first, Ben filled the glass tumbler on the counter with water, before opening up the hinged mirror and taking out a bottle of aspirin, popping three of them into his hand before tossing them into his mouth, and then chasing them down with the water from the tumbler. Once this was finished, the tumbler was washed out and the medicine was replaced behind the mirror cabinet, Ben took a step over to where Gwen was, taking a seat at the edge of the tub, alongside her.

"So, what's that you've got in your hand?" he finally asked her, having never seen thes like of something like it before; it seemed to be a tapered sort of plastic stick, and there was some sort of marking in blue at the end; it was a baffling object.

"Well, do you see this little blue plus sign here?" Gwen said to him, moving the stick in closer toward his face; when he nodded that he saw it, she added, "Well, that's the results of a test I just took."

Suddenly, Ben felt as if he knew _exactly_ what he'd just been looking at.

"I'd been feeling a bit uneasy the past week, and I wasn't, erhm, getting my visit from mother nature, if I should put it in such a way… and since we did do what did that one time, I figured there was a possibility, and as it so turns out…"

Standing up from the tub, Gwen waved the pregnancy test around a bit, before announcing to Ben, "It's positive. I'm pregnant."

Feeling an immense mixture of six hundred and seventy different feelings and emotions at once as he heard Gwen say these words, Ben finally calmed himself down enough to manage to focus on giving the redhead a smile. When she returned the smile, Ben reached out and placed a hand on Gwen's flat (for now) stomach, and said simply, "_Heya, Maxy_."


End file.
